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.

Jurassic World: Dominion (2022) is exactly the movie you'd expect. If you love dinosaurs and the Jurassic Park franchise, you will love this love letter of a film addressed specifically to you. If you fall more on the critical side of things, valid or otherwise, you will have the usual feeling that beyond the grand spectacle, the 'math ain't mathing' in the film. Either way, the film is the big, bombastic action-horror thriller finale that everyone is expecting.

The [SPOILER-Free] story of Jurassic World: Dominion is that the humans never learned from their mistakes from the previous films, science is still running amok, and the world is paying the price. The dinosaurs released in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) have entered the world's ecosystems, creating an ecological disaster. Biosyn, the shady company that tried to steal embryos in Jurassic Park (1993), is handling the global relocation of the dinosaurs. Apparently, being unilaterally appointed by the U.S. Government. This seems a bit tone-deaf for a 2022 film, but on-brand for the self-importance of American corporations and their fans. Not to be outdone by the mistakes of previous films, Biosyn creates a brand-new ecological disaster. The new ecological disaster on top of the wild dinosaurs for nebulously evil and corporate greed feels unnecessary. From a storytelling perspective, it’s a plot device to get our main cast and the dinosaurs all in one location. After all, that’s what we came to see, dinosaurs chomping down on people. Why the filmmakers felt like the dinosaur relocation and Biosyn’s corruption were not enough, is puzzling, but ultimately inconsequential. The motivation and plot are done well enough for suspension of disbelief.

Bringing the cast to the dinosaurs consumes the first half of the film. Thankfully, there are action sequences to temper the slower beginning. However, there lies another potential flaw in the film. Since the release of the Jurassic Park requel, Jurassic World(2015), the films began integrating more action-thriller tropes, and these have had mixed reactions from fans. The feeling of Jurassic World: Dominion is a big summer action blockbuster, with many sequences following the ‘rule of cool’, rather than realistic outcomes for human-dinosaur combat. There are explosions, gun battles, hand-to-hand combat, motorcycle vs raptor races, and dinosaur-kaiju style battles. These action tropes compete with the horror of wild dinosaurs. These action sequences also blur the line between Chris Pratt’s roles as Owen Grady and Starlord (Guardians of the Galaxy). Even Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) has picked up some action heroine moves that were entertaining to watch. But, your mileage varies on if these action tropes are good or bad for the franchise.