Jurassic World Rebirth Review: "An unscary sequel that needed a little more time in amber"

Jurassic World Rebirth starts with a scientist accidentally dropping a Snickers wrapper. It’s a simple mistake that dooms the inhabitants of Ile Saint-Huber to death by mutant dinosaur, and makes for a tantalisingly straightforward setup for what’s to come.

At least, it should have. What comes next is almost an hour of exposition-heavy table-setting as director Gareth Edwards (Rogue One, The Creator) contends with the fact that Rebirth is the seventh instalment in an extremely unwieldy franchise – one that, lest we forget, unleashed dinosaurs onto the entire world (Fallen Kingdom) only to tell a story about locusts (Dominion) – while also attempting to kickstart of a new Jurassic era.

Rebirth first deals with the legacy of the second Jurassic trilogy succinctly: we are told that the reborn dinosaurs are dying from disease, caused by our modern climate. A New York traffic jam caused by a dying, blotch-covered dinosaur exemplifies the point. A few moments later, an animated museum exhibit reaffirms the same thing, adding that dinosaurs are capable of living around the equator. Then, for good measure, we are told all of this again at length by Jonathan Bailey’s palaeontologist, just in case you missed something.

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This isn’t exactly a major issue – plenty of movies spend longer explaining less high-concept ideas – but it does exemplify how little faith the script, written by original Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp, has in the audience understanding nuance. This is particularly galling as we are introduced to two new groups of characters, each person’s backstory being spelt out rather than organically revealed through action, with one particularly exasperating conversation between long-time friends Zora and Duncan (Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali) setting up their character arcs in excruciatingly obvious fashion.

Of course, alongside telling us these backstories, Rebirth has to start the actual plot. Zora, a former Spec Ops operator, is hired by Rupert Friend’s deep-pocketed Big Pharma financier to help collect blood samples from three huge dinosaurs. They approach Jonathan Bailey’s Dr. Henry Loomis to help retrieve the specimens, which are all conveniently located on the aforementioned Ile Saint-Huber, now wildly dangerous after the Snickers incident. To get there, they’ll need help from Ali’s Duncan, a man with a boat, Ed Skrein’s mercenary, and two other red shirts. Oh, and there’s a stranded family – a father, two daughters, and one stoner boyfriend – who cross paths with our main group.

Let’s Talk

The first half of Rebirth is, it’s fair to say, not short of people saying things. And while it is ungainly, overlong, and Skrein is thoroughly short-changed, the moment these characters set foot on Saint-Huber, everything clicks. Our heroes stop talking like machines and start acting like real people. Dinosaurs that aren’t submerged under water make their glorious return to the screen. There’s a brilliant set-piece down a river featuring a T-rex (repurposed from the original Jurassic Park book) and another on a cliff face. All of this is beautifully staged by Edwards and shot by cinematographer John Mathieson. This is what Jurassic should be: humans marvelling at glorious dinosaurs as they go on an adventure.

Bailey is the film’s MVP. After spending the first hour explaining and re-explaining concepts to us, he’s allowed to bask in the glory of the dinosaurs, and his chemistry with Johansson lights up certain moments. Speaking of Johansson’s Zora, she becomes less smirky and more of a down-to-business action hero as her survival instincts kick in. Everyone else remains pretty two-dimensional, a waste of Ali, who somehow hasn’t been seen on the big screen in a wide release since Alita: Battle Angel, although he does have one particularly memorable scene towards the end.

Mutant mayhem

Speaking of… it’s unfortunate that Rebirth starts to lose its footing during its mutant-infested conclusion. There’s an explicit echo of the velociraptors stalking the kitchen scene from Jurassic Park, yet the villainous dinosaurs here lack any distinctive characteristics. Later, an even bigger, weirder beast appears, and there’s nothing scary about it.

Indeed, while Edwards nods to Steven Spielberg’s work (not just Park but also Indiana Jones and Jaws) on many occasions, Rebirth lacks the finely tuned, child-friendly horror that made those movies classics. There’s just no bite. Even when characters die, their deaths have little impact, especially one fate that’s severely undercut by the time the credits roll.

There’s a palpable sense that Rebirth needed a little longer time incubating than it was given (it comes only three years after Dominion, which concluded Colin Trevorrow’s World trilogy). Still, Edwards proves once more to have an eye for brilliant set-pieces and staging. If the script had been tighter and less complicated, the characters more fleshed out, and the dinosaurs allowed to be, you know, normal dinosaurs, this could have been a much more exciting start to a new era. Instead, it joins a pile of average sequels to a phenomenal, groundbreaking original.

Jurassic World Rebirth opens in cinemas on July 2. In the meantime, check out our guide to the rest of this year's biggest upcoming movies.