On several previous occasions here at Shuker In MovieLand, I've recalled how, while seeking one particular movie either online or in physical DVD/video format, I've inadvertently stumbled upon a completely different one, and which has turned out to be far more interesting than the one I'd originally been looking for. And so it proved with the movie under review here now – an engrossing, highly original sci fi twist upon the unsuspected survival into modern-times of dinosaurs (other than birds!). Its title? Anonymous Rex.
Directed by Julian Jarrold, Anonymous Rex is a TV movie produced by the Sci Fi Channel (now renamed Syfy) and first screened in 2004. It is based upon the second in a trilogy of satirical dinosaur-themed sci fi novels authored by Eric Garcia (who also served as one of this movie's co-producers). These were: Anonymous Rex (published in 1999), Casual Rex (2001, a prequel to Anonymous Rex), and Hot and Sweaty Rex (2004, a sequel to Anonymous Rex). Before going any further, however, I need to resolve what may otherwise be a source of confusion. Despite being entitled Anonymous Rex, this movie is not based upon the 1999 Garcia novel of that selfsame title; instead it is based upon his 2001 novel, Casual Rex. Why this confusing nomenclatural situation should be, I have no idea, but there it is. So if you plan on reading the novel upon which this movie is based, make sure that you buy Casual Rex, not Anonymous Rex.
Anyway, back to the movie. It was while searching recently through the IMDb website for details concerning some film that I can't even recall now that I happened to find myself on its page entry for Anonymous Rex, a movie I'd never previously heard of. After reading its plot synopsis, however, I was so captivated by it that I lost no time in seeking out the movie, watching it, and totally loving it throughout!
Normally at this point in one of my film reviews, I present my own summary of the film in question, but seeing that it was specifically the IMDb synopsis for it that directly inspired me to track down and watch Anonymous Rex, it seemed appropriate that I should incorporate this here for you to read as well, so here it is:
The dinosaurs didn't go completely extinct when the asteroids hit 65 million years ago. Today, every ten thousandth person in the country is a dinosaur, evolved to be human-sized, wearing sophisticated solid-light holographic disguises to maintain the façade [of looking exactly like humans], getting stoned off regular cooking herbs like basil, rosemary and tarragon, and living by their own shadow government's laws; any human who stumbles upon them is to be immediately executed. Two dino private investigators, velociraptor Vincent Rubio and triceratops Ernie Watson, are hired by one of Ernie's old girlfriends to find out why her younger brother committed suicide, and discover a dino cult called [The] Voice Of Progress that wants dinokind to come out of the closet and reclaim the planet. —Jeff Cross <blackjac_1998@yahoo.com>
So there you have it. The modern-day world is home to a concealed sub-culture of dinosaurs (belonging to a wide variety of different species), all flawlessly disguised as humans, infiltrating every vocation and walk of life, working and living alongside humans, but with our species none the wiser…usually. For although the dinosaurs do not pose a threat to us as long we do not discover their true, reptilian identity, they will not hesitate to eliminate any of us who do (one remorseless example of this policy is shown at the very beginning of the film). But to be fair, they did learn the hard way about remaining hidden, as I'll now explain.
With their numbers greatly depleted following the asteroid collision at the end of the Cretaceous, the dinosaurs lived very much in the shadow of the now-dominant mammals from then on, but that was not a major problem – until humans evolved, that is. By the Middle Ages, the dinosaurs were facing the biggest threat to their survival since the asteroid. They had evolved into the dragons of myths and legends (except of course these stories were actually true!), but humans sent forth numerous errant knights and other heroes to slay them and rescue any distressed damsels that may have strayed their way. Consequently, in order to avoid extinction at the hands, and weapons, of their human aggressors, the dinosaurs decided that they had no option but to disguise themselves as humans. Initially, these disguises took the form of unconvincing rubber suits and suchlike, but dinosaur scientists working covertly in their own laboratories hidden far away from human detection proved far smarter than their mammalian counterparts, and by the late 20th Century they had invented the extraordinarily advanced holographic human disguises that rendered dinosaurs outwardly indistinguishable from the real thing – but not from each other... More about this shortly.
As noted in the IMDb review, Anonymous Rex focuses upon a pair of dinosaur gumshoe PIs – taciturn velociraptor Vincent Rubio (played by Sam Trammell, and also acting as the movie's narrator) and his more amiable triceratopsian partner Ernie Watson (Daniel Baldwin), tasked with discovering the truth behind the supposed suicide of the young brother of one of Ernie's former girlfriends, Louise (Lori Alter). Their investigations lead them to The Voice of Progress, a sinister activist dinosaur cult of which Louise's late brother had been a member, and which is fronted by an enigmatic woman named Circe (Tamara Gorski). She is also the cult's literal voice, espousing at a meeting of the cult attended by Vincent and Ernie how dinosaurs have spent long enough suppressing their true form and nature, forced to live a false existence throughout their life, as something that they are not – humans. Why should this be allowed to continue? It was high time, she exclaims, that dinosaurs not only make their presence publicly known but also reclaim what had it not been for the asteroid would still be theirs – the world!
Ernie is unaffected by Circe's exhortations, but to his surprise and discomfort Vincent finds himself somewhat sympathetic to the cult's cause (and is further conflicted by finding himself romantically attracted to Circe…) – until, that is, he discovers how it intends to achieve this reptilian uprising. In a secluded area of the cult's headquarters, Vincent sees a living cow being led into a chamber, followed by hideous screams from the cow mixed with the sounds of flesh-tearing and bone-crunching. Peering inside, he is aghast to see a feral undisguised carnivorous dinosaur, drugged to the hilt on cooking herbs, ripping the cow apart and devouring its carcase in a bloodthirsty frenzy – mostly occurring off-screen, thankfully! (In contrast, civilised dinosaurs gave up eating raw flesh 10 million years ago, after they discovered fire.) This, Vincent realizes to his horror, is the fate that the cult plans for humans! Somehow he has to stop what will be a bloodbath and social devastation, unquestionably inciting a full-scale world war between two lineages that at least in modern times has succeeded in living side by side in relative harmony (albeit with humans being blissfully unaware of any of this!).
To make matters even worse, the cult's villainous sponsor and kingpin, Raal (Alan van Sprang), becomes aware of Vincent's interest in it and in his belief that it is directly implicated in the killing – not suicide at all – of Louise's brother. So Raal decides to do something about this, part of which involves abducting Ernie's 23-year-old daughter Gabrielle (Stephanie Lemelin). When Ernie discovers what has happened, he frantically calls Vincent to meet him, as he has a major confession to make before they can go out looking for her.
But what Ernie informs him undermines and shocks Vincent even more than the cult's frightening plans uncovered by him earlier. Vincent knows that Ernie shares his home with Gabrielle, but what he hadn't known until now is that she is not his daughter – and that she is not even a dinosaur!
It turns out that 23 years ago, a dinosaur squad had been sent to liquidate a family of human hippies who had uncovered the dinosaurs' big secret and had amassed incriminating documents and photos that they'd planned to use for blackmail purposes. After the adults had been killed, Ernie had been sent in to remove all this evidence, but was shocked to discover the hippies' baby daughter, who had been hidden away and thus overlooked by the squad, but was now an orphan. Unable to bring himself to abandon her to a foster home (the usual fate of babies orphaned in this manner but who are too young to realize about the dinosaurs and thereby pose any threat to them), Ernie took her back home with him instead and raised her as his own daughter, Gabrielle. Of course, this meant that he had to reveal the dinosaurs' secret existence to her, for her own safety as a human living incognito within dinosaur society, but he also offered her the choice of living her life either as the human she is or as a human pretending to be a dinosaur pretending to be a human, She chose the latter option without a moment's hesitation, due in no small way to the fact that Gabrielle loves Ernie very much, as he is the only parental figure she can ever remember having in her life. However, maintaining the subterfuge is proving more difficult now that she is an attractive young woman.
Indeed, Gabrielle currently has a dinosaur boyfriend, who is anxious to get to know her more intimately, but to do so means switching off their holographic suits first, which in turn means revealing to each other their true, dinosaur forms – except, of course, Gabrielle can't do this, because she isn't a dinosaur, she's a human! Consequently, she is forced to sidestep her boyfriend's increasingly-emphatic requests, leaving both of them frustrated, but for more reasons on Gabrielle's part than her boyfriend suspects! In addition, even though they look exactly like humans when cloaked by their head-to-toe holographic suits, dinosaurs can still instantly recognize other dinosaurs, by virtue of the reptilian pheromones that they exude, and which are undetectable by humans. So to ensure that Gabrielle's human identity is not betrayed by her inability to exude such pheromones, Ernie has always obtained supplies of an artificially-created version, a supply of which she keeps with her at all times in a tiny aerosol vial, and always sprays on her neck before leaving their house – but this aspect of her life may now prove her undoing, which is why Ernie had no choice but to make Vincent fully aware about who, and what, Gabrielle actually is.
And sure enough, it all begins to unravel in a key scene that takes place in the kidnap car (Raal's limousine) speeding away with her inside it, sandwiched between Raal and one of his cult henchmen, both of whom are of course dinosaurs. The problem is, whereas dinosaurs exude their reptilian pheromone in a natural, ongoing manner as it is created internally and continuously, the artificial version that Gabrielle has to apply to herself externally (on her neck) begins to fade if not reapplied regularly – and this is exactly what is happening right now. By being trapped between the two dinosaurs in the car, however, she cannot take out her vial to reapply the pheromone, even though Raal's acute sense of smell is starting to detect that her scent is fading, and he duly comments about this to her – uh-oh! I don't smell her pheromone either, but I do smell trouble for her – big trouble!
I won't give away the remainder of this absorbing film's swift-moving plot, which is well planned and well executed. Special effects are decent if not dazzling, with dinosaur-into-human transformations not over-employed, wisely utilising a less is more approach instead. Faye Dunaway and Isaac Hayes have cameo appearances as members of an elite dinosaur council, and the movie itself is played very much as at least a tongue-in-cheek film noir pastiche, even if not an outright spoof (and with some not entirely subtle pleas for toleration between different factions worked in for good measure). I enjoyed it very much – one of my favourite and most distinctive, memorable movies viewed for quite some time, in fact. Indeed, I may well purchase and read the Garcia novel on which it is based (i.e. Casual Rex, not Anonymous Rex, remember!).
By its very nature, Anonymous Rex calls to mind the famous TV series V: The Visitors, as well as Alien Nation, and even the vampire series Moonlight and Forever Knight. Moreover, this movie was actually created and pitched as a feature-length pilot for a planned TV series, but sadly the series never materialized. In my opinion, this is a real shame, as it held great promise – offering a compelling mix of sci fi, film noir, comedy, and a hefty dose of off-the-wall, offbeat eccentricity. Who knows, with the plethora of sci fi/fantasy TV shows filling the schedules nowadays, perhaps Anonymous Rex as a TV show was simply too far ahead of its time – today it would have fitted in just fine, I'm sure, rather like the dinosaurs do amongst the humans in this movie, in fact!
As I discovered, Anonymous Rex is not the easiest film to track down in physical form, though I finally traced it in Region 1 (USA/Canada-compatible) DVD format; I don’t think that it's ever been released in Region 2 (UK/Europe-compatible) DVD format. But if you simply want to watch it, and I heartily recommend that you do, you currently can by clicking here to view this movie for free in its entirety on YouTube.
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