The air hangs thick and stale, choked with dust and the metallic tang of impending disaster. Deep beneath the earth, in the echoing confines of some forgotten mining facility, the silence isn't peaceful – it’s the heavy quiet after a scream, the pause before something truly awful claws its way out of the dark. This is the suffocating territory of Carnosaur 2, a film that plunges straight into the gloom, trading the bio-genetic absurdity of its predecessor for a claustrophobic, subterranean nightmare that feels instantly, unnervingly familiar.
Released in 1995, deep in the golden age of direct-to-video creature features that lined the shelves of every Blockbuster and Hollywood Video, Carnosaur 2 wears its influences proudly, perhaps a little too proudly, on its blood-splattered sleeve. Forget complex plots; the setup is brutally efficient, almost primal. A remote mining installation goes ominously silent. A team of technicians, led by the grizzled Cliff De Young (Flight of the Navigator, The Craft), is sent in to investigate whatever tripped the emergency systems. What they find isn't faulty wiring or a gas leak. It's something ancient, something hungry, something... cloned? Okay, the specifics get a little fuzzy, nodding vaguely back to the first film’s premise, but the immediate threat is clear: Velociraptor-esque predators stalking the tunnels, and a certain Tyrannosaurus Rex making its presence known.
Subterranean Stalkers
If the premise - isolated industrial complex, rag-tag team picked off one-by-one by vicious creatures - sounds suspiciously like James Cameron's 1986 masterpiece Aliens, well, you've hit the nailgun on the head. Carnosaur 2 is an unashamed riff on that template, swapping Xenomorphs for Deinonychus (let's be honest, they look more like raptors here) and the Nostromo crew/Colonial Marines for a handful of technicians and a shell-shocked military supervisor, Major McQuade, played with haunted intensity by John Savage (The Deer Hunter, The Thin Red Line). Savage, looking perpetually like he just wandered off the set of a more prestigious, infinitely more depressing film, brings a surprising degree of gravitas to the proceedings. His thousand-yard stare seems to carry the weight of horrors unseen, even before the dinosaurs show up.
The genius, or perhaps the sheer Corman-esque audacity, lies in taking that high-concept Aliens structure and grafting it onto a Roger Corman-produced, low-budget dinosaur flick. Directed by Louis Morneau, who clearly knew how to stretch a dollar and make dimly lit corridors look menacing (skills he'd later apply to films like Bats), the film focuses on tight spaces, sudden attacks, and practical creature effects. Gone is the broad daylight terror of Jurassic Park; this is about shadows, jump scares, and the gnawing fear of what’s lurking around the next corner of reinforced concrete.
Dinos on a Dime
Let's talk about those dinosaurs. Crafted by John Carl Buechler's Magical Media Industries – the same team behind the effects in the first Carnosaur and genre staples like Ghoulies (1984) and From Beyond (1986) – the creatures are a testament to practical effects ingenuity under duress. While undeniably dated now, there's a certain tactile menace to the puppets and animatronics used here. They often reused and modified creature suits and props from the first film to save costs, a classic Corman technique. Remember how tangible those rubbery hides and snapping jaws felt on your grainy CRT screen back in the day? They may not have the fluid menace of CGI, but the physical presence of these monsters, wrestling with actors in cramped hallways reportedly filmed in parts of a working quarry in Irwindale, California, lends a specific kind of B-movie charm and occasional effectiveness. The gore is plentiful, often bordering on gratuitous, fulfilling the promise of its title.
The production itself embodies that scrappy, make-it-work spirit of 90s DTV filmmaking. Concorde-New Horizons, Corman’s company, was legendary for churning out genre pictures quickly and cheaply, often capitalizing on the buzz of bigger Hollywood blockbusters. Carnosaur 2 feels precisely like that – an attempt to blend the Jurassic Park craze with the Aliens structure, shot efficiently and aimed squarely at the Saturday night rental crowd hungry for monster action. Did you ever pause the tape just to get a better look at the raptor puppets, trying to figure out how they worked?
Echoes in the Dark
While the script by Michael Palmer isn't exactly Shakespeare, it keeps things moving at a brisk pace. The characters are mostly archetypes – the hardened veteran (Don Stroud adding his reliable tough-guy presence), the resourceful tech expert, the doomed security guy – but they serve their purpose: providing fodder for the prehistoric predators and ratcheting up the tension as their numbers dwindle. The film doesn't waste time on complex motivations; it's about survival in a concrete maze filled with teeth and claws. The industrial setting, all grimy corridors, flickering emergency lights, and echoing machinery sounds, genuinely works to create a sense of claustrophobia and decay.
Is it a masterpiece? Absolutely not. The seams of its low budget show, the plot borrows heavily, and some of the effects might elicit more chuckles than chills today. Yet, there's an earnestness to Carnosaur 2 that's hard to dislike, especially for those of us who wore out our VCRs on this kind of fare. It delivers exactly what it promises: dinosaurs munching on humans in dark, enclosed spaces. It understands the primal appeal of the creature feature and leans into it with gusto. I distinctively remember renting this one, hoping for Aliens but with dinosaurs, and getting... well, exactly that, albeit filtered through the glorious lens of Roger Corman efficiency.
***
VHS Heaven Rating: 5/10
The Verdict: Carnosaur 2 gets a solid 5 out of 10. It's undeniably derivative and hampered by its budget, preventing it from reaching the heights of its obvious inspiration (Aliens). The effects are pure 90s practical rubber, charmingly dated now. However, it delivers surprisingly well on its claustrophobic premise, features a commendably intense performance from John Savage, and provides enough creature carnage and B-movie energy to entertain fans of the genre. It knows what it is – a lean, mean, direct-to-video monster mash – and executes that vision with workmanlike efficiency. It might not be high art, but as a slice of 90s VHS creature feature history, it’s a fun, if familiar, descent into the dark. Doesn't that T-Rex reveal still manage a certain low-budget 'oomph'?