Jurassic Park (1993)

As this critic continues to look back at some of this Summer's films I have taken in, I would be remiss if I didn't mention one of the most overall unsettling trends in Hollywood over the last several years.....sequels, reboots, and remakes. Look, I am all for seeing more than one film for certain originals that made a splash, ie: "Jurassic Park", "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Transformers", etc. HOWEVER, once it all gets pushed TOO far over the course of TOO MANY follow-ups, sorry, but the luster, uniqueness, and quality heads decidedly southward.

"If movies are the dreams of the mass culture... horror movies are the nightmares"-Stephen King

This simple question causes a lot of (sometimes dishonest) debate. While it is not reasonable to expect everyone to have film genre theory under their metaphorical belt, it is still frustrating to hear people spout problematic criteria that falls apart in microseconds under the most basic scrutiny. I'll be critiquing some of the more nonsensical takes before ending with a working definition. Horror filmmaking is rooted in stories, folk tales, tall tales, and any other storytelling intended to scare, shock, and thrill listeners. It is meant to repulse us, often with a central villain, monster, or threat that is often a reflection of the fears being experienced by society at the time. This person or creature is the monstrous other, a term that refers to someone that is feared because they are different or misunderstood. The Horror genre changes because society changes.

65 (2023) is The Last of Us with Alien and Jurassic Park thrown in for some extra razzle-dazzle.

How does one make a movie about a natural predator terrorizing humans in a new way? This is the question many modern monster movies run into at conception. Most never convincingly answer. No shark movie after Jaws has done much more than solidify the shark-movie conventions set forth by that blockbuster by more or less following the story beats. Most are disregarded as cheap mockbusters save a handful like Deep Blue Sea and 47 Meters Down. And even these films only really changed the location, being completely immersed in the ocean as opposed to on a beach and/or in boats.