The Dinosaurs Are Back, and Worse!

Retread, rerun, reboot. Whatever you want to call it, the stillborn monster movie Jurassic World Rebirth is less concerned with prehistoric partum than it is with recycled reptiles. Correction: mutant reptiles, since the gist of this seventh entry in the Jurassic Park franchise is all about cross-bred lab experimentations gone wrong. And these novel dinosaurs really are terrible lizards, lousy feats of “engineered entertainments.”

The worst of them is a Mütter-Museum-worthy genetic misfit called the D-Rex — specifically version #23.11 — which has two sets of stubby arms and a bulbous head reminiscent of a beluga whale crossed with a xenomorph. That big fella was lab-grown on Ile Saint-Hubert, 226 miles from French Guiana. InGen used the Caribbean locale 32 years ago as a creative incubator for test-tube terrors slated to be in the original ill-fated Jurassic Park situated on the Costa-Rica-adjacent fallen paradise Isla Nubar.

Jurassic World Rebirth  ★★★ (3/5 stars)
Directed by: Gareth Edwards
Written by: David Koepp
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Ed Skrein
Running time: 133 mins

“Interest has waned,” reads an opening copy card explaining the state of play for all those Jurassic World creatures on the loose from the previous three movies. Just look at the collective shrug New Yorkers give to an ailing brontosaurus under the Brooklyn Bridge. Poor guy even got tagged on his ass with graffiti! Due to climate change and disease, the dinosaurs are dying out and the general human public is tuning out. But genetic profiteer Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), from the ever-dubious world of Big Pharma (specifically ParkerGenix) has other plans: track down the biggest of the remainders, who now populate remote equatorial areas for the agreeable tropical climes, and extract blood samples for medical use.

Turns out that the paleodioxins from their enormous coronary muscles — specifically the seaworthy Mosasaurus, landlocked Titanosaurus, and airbound Quetzalcoatlus — hold the key to preventing heart disease. And if ParkerGenix can manufacture a human-friendly version, then the new revenue stream could be worth trillions of dollars. So sinister Krebs pays $10 million to ace covert-ops expert Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) to lead them into forbidden travel zones, bringing along nerdy hunk paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) and boat captain Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) to help navigate the interspecies freakshow.

Some prefab backstory: Zora lost her man due to a car bomb in Yemen, and she also missed her mom’s funeral. Duncan has been estranged from his wife ever since their baby died. We know this because they talk about it with each other; Zora later sits on the deck, staring out at the sea with her weepy moist eyes. They have baggage!

Meanwhile, miles away, the Mosasaurus capsizes a 45-foot sailboat holding civilian skipper Reuben Delgado (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), his daughter Teresa (Luna Blaise) and her lazy boyfriend Xavier (David Iacono), as well as younger daughter Isabella (Audrina Miranda). They have their own dysfunctional family dynamic, but it’s not worth explaining: dinosaurs are coming and they need people to chase.

Zora and Duncan pick up the castaways en route to Ile Saint-Hubert — more grist for the mill — and, during an attack, the Delgado party promptly separate from Krebs’ outfit. But that’s okay, because they miraculously keep finding each other on the island without making any rendezvous plans or having any communication devices.

Loomis is good, because he wants Zora to help him give the blood samples to the entire world and make a patent-free cure for heart disease. And Krebs is legit evil because he catches a young woman calling in an SOS to the authorities and lets her slip into carnivore-infested waters instead of saving her.

But no one is here for a morality play, since it’s kind of baked into the entire Frankenstein-adjacent premise of reviving an extinct species. We want to see dinosaurs! And just like the VelociCoaster ride at Universal Orlando, Jurassic World Rebirth dutifully delivers requisite white-knuckle jump scares. Filmmaker Gareth Edwards may not care much about compelling characters, but he sure knows how to direct menacing monsters hell-bent on ripping apart its prey.

Expect a bunch of incredulous close-calls that require hiding in nooks or defunct gas station display coolers, as well as running around muddy swamps, hanging off cliffs, and navigating geothermal sewer systems. Dinosaurs attack, humans fight to survive, and audiences will be thrilled and bored in equal measure. Lather, rinse, repeat.