Jurassic World Rebirth soars when it puts its characters into dark corners they can’t escape, and shows off the truly fearsome sight of gigantic dinosaurs. Gareth Edwards captures the nocturnal and eerie feeling that comes with visiting an abandoned theme park and experiment gone wrong. The cast has strong chemistry, even when dealt a fairly cliched script. It takes a while to get going, with the second-half of the film delivering most of the tension and action.
Jurassic World Rebirth is directed by BAFTA winner Gareth Edwards from a script by David Koepp. Set five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, the planet’s ecology has proven largely inhospitable to dinosaurs. Those remaining exist in isolated equatorial environments with climates resembling the one in which they once thrived. The three most colossal creatures across land, sea and air within that tropical biosphere hold, in their DNA, the key to a drug that will bring miraculous life-saving benefits to humankind.
The first half of the movie is markedly slower than the second. Script writer Koepp takes time to set up the backstories of each character. Dr Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) is interesting because of his admittedly geeky passion for dinosaur history. And both Zora Bennet (Scarlett Johansson) and Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) are given equally sad backstories with family members that died off-screen in Jurassic expeditions.
While Johansson and Bailey have great chemistry and screen presence, they ultimately have to do their best with fairly cliched dialogue that feels unpolished. Dramatic scenes drag on without much punchiness, and comedic interjections can feel forced. Mahershala Ali is a great grounding force of the film, and his reactions to some of the scariest moments of the film are a highlight.
After the story then spends a chunk of runtime introducing the young family which serves as the film’s B-plot, the script begins to drag. The characters aren’t particularly layered, and the first hour mostly sees them milling around while dinosaurs intermittently attack them without much ferocity.
It is a delight therefore, that once the team reaches the second-half of their adventure, Edwards rescues the movie by picking up the scale, the intensity, and the action. The literal cliffhanger mission that Loomis and Zora are placed in takes notes form Indiana Jones and classic Spielberg adventures. The cinematography also becomes more interesting, with rich gold tones filling the screen in an exotic desert aesthetic. The high-wire stunt work is especially exhilarating. Combined with flying dinosaurs and hanging of ledges, Edwards raises the stakes in rapid succession, and it’s hugely entertaining to watch.
Once the lights go out though, the film’s tone changes completely. The third act sees the team stranded at night in an abandoned research facility from the first Jurassic Park movie. Edwards turns up the intensity, the brutality, and even the visual language transforms into one of a dimly lit wasteland horror movie. The set design is intricate, with characters sneaking around underground tunnels and darkened corners filled with artefacts of horribly deformed failed experiments. Flickering lights with eerily echoing music set the tone and all the trappings of an abandoned horror are here. The terrifying action that audiences have come to expect from the Jurassic franchise is finally delivered.
Edwards isn’t reinventing the franchise, with Rebirth, but he does attempt to layer some political storytelling. Dr Loomis is committed to a patent-free open source for cure that the researches are searching for. It’s a welcome attempt which connects to the original film’s themes of the ethical dilemmas that exist in scientific research.
In all, Jurassic World Rebirth offers captivating cinematography, intense escape sequences, and a grand scale that is worth staying for by the end of the film. Audiences familiar with the franchise will be pleased that it delivers the same roaring action it’s known for once the adventure truly gets going.
Jurassic World Rebirth releases in Australian cinemas on July 3rd.
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