I really liked this movie! I'd have to see it again to be sure, but it might be my second favorite in the series overall. Similarly to Alien Romulus, I feel like it took a lot of the underserved ideas from the previous movies and gave them a nice polish here. You liked the Spinosaurus from JP3, it gets a better showing and some gnarly kills here. You liked the Mosasaurus from Jurassic World, it shines a lot brighter here as a sea monster. You liked Beta the cute baby raptor from Dominion, Dolores the little backpack buddy is even cuter. You liked the hybrid dinosaurs, they go full Frankenstein here. They even had a kid in the movie and she wasn't an annoying Macaulay Culkin type! Structurally, it reminded me a lot of the old Harryhausen Sinbad movies. Just a quest to a lost island, where things go awry in a visually arresting way.

#JurassicWorldRebirth Jurassic World

Review

The dinosaurs are scary again.

That was my first thought as the end credits rolled for the latest addition to the Jurassic Park/Jurassic World franchise. After three films that swerved away from the more directly horrific elements of the original Jurassic Park trilogy into more action adventure territory (save for the final act of Fallen Kingdom set in a mansion, which serves as a terrific monster movie) , Rebirth returns to that sense of ever present danger, where a potentially life ending encounter with a dangerous species of dinosaur is waiting down every path, across every field and in the thick of every jungle.

The film opens on the island of Il Saint-Hubert in the Atlantic Ocean, several years prior to the events of Jurassic World. There's an InGen research lab there working on some cross breeding experiments and something goes terribly wrong.

The film jumps forward to some five years after the events of Dominion and sees the genetic research company ParkerGenix funding an expedition to Il Saint-Hubert at the equator in search of blood samples from three specific species of dinosaur which are believed to hold the key to developing a cure for heart disease

It seems our 21st century climate has not been kind to the dinosaurs in what the media refers to as the Neo-Jurassic Age , causing them to largely die out across the world, save for one specific region in the equatorial areas where the surviving creatures have gathered.

At this point, every government on Earth has established a do not land here policy, so sending the team in definitely falls into a legal grey area.

Enter Zora Bennett ( Scarlett Johansson) and Duncan Kincaid ( Mahershala Ali) , old friends and colleagues whose specialty is going into places others won't and accomplishing extractions others can't.

Their objective? To escort the genius paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Johnathan Bailey) to the island and ensure his safety as he collects the samples from the dinosaurs, the catch being he needs the animals to be alive for the samples to have the intended medical value.

After gathering their usual crew, Bennett and Kincaid take Loomis and Martin Krebs - a representative of ParkerGenix ( Rupert Friend at his slimy best) to the island to get those samples.

En route, they encounter a family in distress, adrift on a capsized sailboat, which earlier had been attacked by some of the more aggressive seafaring dinosaurs.

After rescuing the family, a situation develops while attempting to extract the first sample from one of the aquatic dinosaurs and things quickly go south, leaving everyone shipwrecked on one Il Saint-Hubert.

Because of the medical importance of those samples, the decision is made to finish the mission and then get everyone to one of the old InGen landing sites, contact a helicopter from ParkerGenix and get out of there. Unfortunately, that means traversing an unfamiliar tropical island populated by all manner of wild dinosaurs.

That's about all I'll say about the plot. If you've seen a Jurassic Park/World movie, you know what's going to happen next.

How much you enjoy this will depend on whether or not this franchise still interests you.

I've been very open about the fact this is my favorite movie franchise and that I think all of the films are terrific, even Dominion, which critics savaged but audiences seemed to enjoy.

In regards to what Rebirth does, save for the introduction of a new beast who functions as the Big Bad this time around this does not reinvent the wheel.. It's people surviving an island full of carnivorous dinosaurs. So if you're thinking it's going to be something completely new, I can honestly say it really isn't.

However, if you're okay with that as long as that formula is executed well, you're in for a treat.

I really enjoyed this one a lot for multiple reasons, but mostly because of how they did it.. There's a real focus on making these characters likeable and relatable. The chemistry between Johannsen, Bailey and Ali is engaging and charming. The characters actually respect one another and there's no sense of people with ulterior motives who will eventually turn on one another in their trio. All of them agree of their own individual accord that the getting those samples is too important not to pursue and as long as they're already there, they might as well pull a massive win out of it. And they're all open about their motivations: Ali and Bennett are getting paid and also don't want the unfortunate family to perish; Loomis wants the science who he can take it from Krebs and share it with the world instead and he also wants to make sure the rescued family is safe.

These are decent people who are never bla·sé about someone dying and it's nice to have a cast we can enjoy spending time with.

The same can be said of the family: It's a single Latino father with a teenage daughter, a little girl and, along for their sailing adventure, the teen daughter's lazy, seemingly irresponsible boyfriend.

There's a natural chemistry between these characters and, to my pleasant surprise, there are unexpected developments involving the teenage boyfriend. It turns out, he's not the goofy cliche you think he's going to be.

Gareth Edwards - who directed two of my favorite movies of the past fifteen years, Godzilla (2014) and Rogue One - manages a really solid balance of both fun character moments . Much of the film has the Latino family separated from the scientific expedition once they're on the island and Edwards wisely has the narrative switch back and forth between their respective storylines, gradually intertwining them again.. I've seen people on social media commenting that the family plot thread slows the film down, but I didn't have the slightest issue with the pacing and, honestly, I really liked the family. I thought they were fun characters to watch and I actually found myself invested in them.

Even if it hadn't been all over the press, I think anyone would have figured out David Koepp returned to write this one for the first time since he wrote the first two Jurassic Park movies. Ten minutes in and the dialogue gives it away, turning to that distinct vibe Koepp perfected in The Lost World where intelligent people have conversations about consequential matters and manage to somehow incorporate a degree of dry wit while simultaneously remaining dead serious. It felt good to hear dialogue like that again.

And of course, there are the dinosaurs. And now I circle back to that immediate thought as the credits rolled: The dinosaurs are scary.

Look, I loved the three previous Jurassic World movies, but despite some elements in Fallen Kingdom, they adopted a tone more akin to an Indiana Jones film than the dark edged, frequently terrifying storytelling of the original three.

Rebirth brings that back. Maybe the structure of the film is familiar, but the behavior of the dinosaurs is not. The body count is surprisingly high here and they switch things up by incorporating species we haven't seen a lot of before, while limiting the screen time of the species that have dominated the previous films. I appreciated that, because seven films in and maybe it's okay to not focus so much on raptors and the T-Rex.( though the latter does score the standout set piece of the film, taken directly from the original novel Jurassic Park, where he pursues a family on a raft down a river. If you think you saw anything in the trailer, think again. The full sequence as seen in the film is substantially more impactful than that).

I won't say this is a particularly original movie, but for the type of film it's trying to be, I thought Jurassic World Rebirth was excellent. It really captures the essence of the three original films, follows the canon of the World movies and manages to be a highly entertaining chapter in this story that also gives us something this franchise hasn't to a great degree for a while: Genuine scares.

The marketing for The Lost World Jurassic Park said it best: Something has survived.

The Jurassic franchise is still alive and still a hell of a lot of fun. I had a great time with Jurassic World Rebirth, which returns the franchise not with a whimper, but a roar.

**** out of *****