On an unrelated topic, Jurassic World: Rebirth is the seventh in the Jurassic Park / World series, and after the last film brought pretty much everyone back for a farewell that was... better than some of the other films in the series... this one strikes out for all new territory. Only joking, it's basically the same movie as at least two of the other ones.
After being a world-spanning threat in previous films, revived dinosaurs have suddenly realised that they're not built for Earth's modern climate and have died off everywhere but a narrow band around the equator - one uninhabited island that was formerly used as a research lab in particular. Just because everyone who goes there dies doesn't mean it's not worth a visit, especially when "worth" is measured in billions because once again dinosaurs hold the key to a world-changing medical breakthrough.
So shady rich dude Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) has hired one mercenary (Scarlett Johansson) and one dinosaur expert (Jonathan Bailey) to in turn hire some disposable sidekicks to help them take blood samples from three different kinds of very big dinosaurs - a flying one, a swimming one, and one just walking around.
Meanwhile, cool dad Reuben (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) is taking his family on a yacht trip across the Atlantic, just in time for them to get crashed into by an ocean-going dinosaur. Older daughter Teresa (Luna Blaise), her stoner boyfriend Xavier (David Iacono), and younger daughter Isabella (Audrina Miranda) cling onto the wreck with a new-found dislike of dinosaurs, only to be rescued by the one boat where the crew think going to Dino Death Island is a good idea.
As you might have predicted if you've ever seen any of the previous movies in the series, things do not go to plan and not everyone survives to be wrecked on the island. Those that do are split into two groups - the family, and the professionals - who alternate mildly scary encounters with the wildlife while trying to make it to the abandoned research base where they can either be rescued or eaten by a demonic genetic freak dinosaur we first saw in the opening scene.
To be fair, just because the overall story is a blatant retread of what has gone before doesn't automatically make this a bad film. Director Gareth Edwards (Monsters, Godzilla, The Creator) serves up a number of thrilling sequences and even a few moments of genuine awe, while the script (from David Koepp, back after scripting Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park: The Lost World) does at least drop Isabella into numerous psychologically scarring situations - so much so that her only path back to sanity turns out to be adopting a cute (and confirmed plant-eating) dinosaur.
Friend, playing the superficially charming but eventually amoral business executive that's been a staple of these kind of films since Aliens, does a good job of portraying his character's arc from "maybe he's not so bad" to "hurry up and fall into a dinosaur's gaping maw", while Johansson and Bailey's charisma helps distract from the fact they're basically playing action figures in a child's backyard game. Everyone else is fair game for the dinos, though fewer people end up eaten than you might have expected.
Being aimed at a slightly younger audience than your average blockbuster usually puts the Jurassic films at a disadvantage, but by sticking to the basics and over-delivering on them this one manages to be both serviceably entertaining and largely forgettable. And if your child is the kind of dinosaur expert who'll complain that the movie versions aren't realistic (where are the feathers?), don't worry - we're told early on that the dinos on and around the island are "genetically modified", so all bets are off.
If nothing else, this does feature an amazing Final Destination-style opening sequence where a dropped Snickers wrapper single-handedly destroys a billion-dollar lab and leads directly to at least one person being eaten alive. Just like life, death finds a way.
-Anthony Morris
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