Poseidon Rex 2014 Movie Review

The plot involves a treasure hunter named Jackson “Jax” Slate, a group of vacationers, a Caribbean drug ring…and yet another big-chested blonde that tries poorly to be passed off as a scientist, but has a such a stupid look on her face through the entire movie that it isn’t even believable that she finished high school, let alone has a PhD in anything. The other characters aren’t supposed to have a greater intelligence, which is great because otherwise their stupid looks would make them even more unbearable than they already are. The various parties find themselves mixed up in the mystery of the “Blue Hole,” a fictional spot believed to be hiding a large amount of lost Mayan treasure. And then, of course, they uncover something terrible. Buried in the depths of the Blue Hole is a creature that’s a mix of Tyrannosaurus and the legendary Kraken. The beast is then unleashed on a small island. “Terror” ensues.

The acting in this film has literally no redeeming qualities. At no point is any performance believable or decent. The characters’ motives and logic throughout the movie are very poor and are only used to move the so-called “plot” forward, even at the expense of anything making sense. It’s really a shame that the ideas used for this movie weren’t used by more competent filmmakers, because Poseidon Rex actually has the makings of something you’d get from a Peter Benchley or Michael Crichton novel. Don’t let that persuade you to watch this movie, though. It is downright awful and I’m almost ashamed to have mentioned those authors’ names here.

Let’s be clear: when it comes to a movie like this you know going in that it’s not going to be anything great, but you hope that it will at least be a fun watch. I grew up on creature features and I still enjoy many that continue to get made. The good ones are fun romps that balance the scary and funny, and the bad ones think they’ve hit that balance, but are actually just terrible. Poseidon Rex obviously qualifies as the latter. The make-up and “special effects” don’t help the film’s case in any way, either. The eponymous Rex looks like something out of a Nintendo 64 game. The fact that the effects in this film aren’t even on par with a Syfy movie is ridiculous. The gore and blood effects are so cheap and useless that they only get a few seconds of screen time whenever any were used. The budget is so small on this movie that I would not be surprised if all the actors were paid in cases of beer.

I somehow managed to sit through this entire movie which, at a short run time of only 79 minutes, felt the length of an extended cut of a Lord of the Rings film. It isn’t even fit to be filed under “B-movie,” a term that I use in a more endearing manner. It’s an F-grade bomb and I encourage any of you that read this to skip this flick and go enjoy a much better creature feature.

I read that Corin Nemec was originally cast in the role of Jax, but was injured early on in the shoot. No stranger to bad horror movies, this would have been somewhat normal fare for him, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he faked his injury just to get out this piece of garbage.

Poseidon Rex was directed by Mark L. Lester and stars Brian Krause (Charmed), Anne McDaniels (The Unknown Trilogy) and Steven Helmkamp (NCIS). It’s currently doing a limited theatrical run in the U.S. and will be on DVD and Blu-ray later this year.