Ivan Radford | On 19, Aug 2025

Director: Gareth Edwards
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Manual Garcia-Rulfo, Ed Skrein
Certificate: 12

“We don’t rule the Earth. We just think we do.” Those are the sage words of Dr Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), a paleontologist who finds himself recruited for a secret mission in Jurassic World: Rebirth. The seventh film in the Jurassic Park series, and the fourth in its Jurassic World era, it arrives after Jurassic World Dominion – a point when the franchise had stopped thinking about whether it should make more films and focused on whether it could. Lulled into the post-Marvel marketplace of thinking bigger is always better, that thinking led to a Jurassic Cinematic Universe that was bloated and weighed down by its past, losing sight of its strengths and distracted by recurring cast members. Jurassic World: Rebirth offers a thrilling reset. Refreshingly unencumbered by the Jurassic World characters, it is a Jurassic World that – for the first time – doesn’t feel like it’s trying to play to the fans.

The background context is all that remains: genetically manufactured dinosaurs are still walking the Earth alongside humans. The climate, however, has killed off half of them, with the remaining species living around the equator in what has become a massive no-travel zone. Enter Martin (Rupert Friend), a CEO from a pharmaceutical company that wants three dinosaur samples to help manufacture a cure for heart disease. He recruits Zora (Scarlett Johansson), a former Black Ops agent turned mercenary, to get them from Île Saint-Hubert, where an InGen lab once existed. She brings along her friend and fellow veteran, Duncan (Mahershala Ali). But, of course, they need a scientist to help retrieve the samples.

Before they can get to the island, though, we meet another group: Reuben (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), his daughters Isabella (Audrina Miranda) and Teresa (Luna Blaise), plus Teresa’s stoner boyfriend, Xavier (David Iacono). They’re crossing the Atlantic in the family boat for one last voyage before Teresa goes to college. Straying into Equatorial waters, though, they find themselves under attack by the seafaring Mosasaurus.

It’s precisely the kind of low-key storytelling the Jurassic franchise has been crying out for – and it’s a real statement of intent from writer David Koepp (of the first two Jurassic Park films), who was approached by Steven Spielberg to pen something that would take the movies back to their roots. The nailbiting ocean sequences, which would leave anyone needing a bigger boat, set the tone for what’s to come – a survival thriller about people out of their depth where any one of them might die at any minute.

While this segue could have been a standalone film in its own right, the two groups inevitably cross paths – think Jaws meets Kong: Skull Island – but the very real sense of peril never goes away. Director Gareth Edwards, who has previous with both Godzilla and Monsters, is a perfect fit for the material. Juggling big scale budgets with small-scale characters, he keeps us emotionally invested in the people on screen, and dials up the blood and carnage to a level not seen since The Lost World. From water running with red to a mutated specimen gone wrong, there’s a surprising streak of horror running through this adventure that takes a long way from Chris Pratt riding motorcycles with raptors.

Edwards crafts several memorable set pieces, many of them either feeling like firsts in the screen franchise or harking back to Michael Crichton’s books. A cliff-scaling exercise is vertigo-inducing, while a rafting sequence is one of the most gripping and exhilarating action sequences you’ll see this year – right down an inspired close-up of teeth coming through the floor of a rubber dinghy that’s worthy of A Nightmare on Elm Street.

The cast, meanwhile, gamely throw themselves into jeopardy, with Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali bringing a brooding weight to their seasoned, macho fighters, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo oozing everyman charisma as a dad trying to keep his kids safe, not just from their bad relationship choices, and David Iacono having just enough to heart to make his wayward suitor likeable in the end. Jonathan Bailey is undoubtedly the MVP, balancing nerdish enthusiasm and nervy fortitude as the doctor who’s always dreamed of seeing dinosaurs in person – and can’t quite shake off that wonder when the dream becomes a nightmare. Holding it all together, meanwhile, is the brilliant Rupert Friend as the ruthless and enjoyably loathsome Martin, the kind of man who utters the immortal words you always want to hear in a Jurassic Park movie: “I’m too smart to die.”

The result is a brilliant back-to-basics recallibration for the Jurassic films that tellingly could do without the “Jurassic World” label altogether. You might wonder who it’s made for, but it’s not aimed at newcomers or die-hard fans: it’s a mainstream action flick (with dinosaurs) that just wants its audience to have a good time. For the first time in a long time, it leaves you wanting to go back to the park for another visit.

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