JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH - Mark Reviews Movies

Jurassic World: Rebirth, Universal Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 1, 2025

Here's an old-fashioned adventure movie with a very fine sense of how to use modern visual effects. The dinosaurs of Jurassic World: Rebirth look quite good, in other words, as they stomp and bite, fly and chomp, and swim and bite some more. Director Gareth Edwards, though, doesn't take the creatures' presence as the be-all and end-all of this film's thrills and sense of fun.

He has made the kind of movie that would have felt more common from the 1930s to the pre-blockbuster '70s, in which characters find themselves exploring and surviving in some mysterious locale filled with wonders and perils. The point of such a tale is that combination of the exploring, the surviving, the wonders, and the perils. Nothing else really matters.

This story, from a screenplay by David Koepp (who returns after writing the first two installments in this franchise), might have worked without the dinosaurs. That's because this plot is also about a seafaring adventure, a trek through the jungle to find shelter, a boat ride through roaring rapids, some high-climbing and precariously hanging suspense, and a race against the clock to be in the right spot for a rescue mission. The dinosaurs amplify all of that in ways that are undeniable, of course, but since the foundation of the adventure without those previously extinct animals is sound, the dinos' function and threat are even stronger in this entry.

The film feels more in line with the extended payoff to the setup of the first film, the better action sequences of the second movie, and the entirety of the non-stop chase that is the (unfairly maligned) third entry. It abandons the satire of the first installment of the reboot trilogy, as well as the increasingly ridiculous mythologization of that one's sequels, to get back to the basics—and then reduce those to something even more rudimentary. That's not a criticism.

The premise is a simple one, just like the story's characters, who are either sympathetic or destined to be eaten. It's set a few years after the previous entry in the series, getting rid of the admirably silly but underutilized idea of dinosaurs living amongst humans by turning a dying dinosaur, the final one alive in North America, into a rush-hour irritation. Any other resurrected dino has moved to the warmer, less-polluted environments near the equator, and that's where our main characters, as well as some inevitable dino-fodder amongst them, are heading.

The goal for Zora (Scarlett Johansson, in full movie-star mode) and her team is to travel to an island that once housed a research laboratory for genetically engineered mutant dinosaurs. It shut down, according to a slimily charming pharmaceutical company executive Martin (Rupert Friend), because the now-bankrupt dino-making company learned its lesson, which is a funny thing to hear in the seventh installment in a series that depends on humans not learning the obvious lesson about resurrecting dinosaurs. When we finally get a good look at the mysterious mutant from the prologue, the unfortunately incongruous appearance of the monster probably should have been a giveaway to the scientists that they have gone far too far.

That island, though, is a perfect spot to get blood samples of three of the largest dinos to ever walk, fly over, or swim on the Earth. Martin and his company believe that blood could result in medication to cure heart disease.

The rest of the team includes boat captain Duncan (Mahershala Ali, bringing characteristic gravitas to the role) and legitimately charming paleontologist Henry (Jonathan Bailey), and after some traveling and setting up of tragic or hopeless back stories, the group is soon hunting the massive Mosasaurus. It takes the boat as a rival predator, which makes for some rough waters as Zora perches herself on the bow and ends up dangling just in reach of the dinosaur's terrifying jaws. Edwards trusts his effects enough to keep the dinos in full view and in broad daylight—a few times unnoticed by a character in the background, such as when the team finally lands on a beach on the island.

Just before that, a family on a cross-Atlantic sailing trip has a run-in with it and a group of other swimming dinos, and the inclusion of this father (played by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), his two daughters (played by Luna Blaise and Audrina Miranda), and the elder sibling's lazy but loyal boyfriend (played by Davd Iacono) is simple math. More characters mean more opportunities for terrifying encounters with dinosaurs, such as one in which the family tries to sneak past and, obviously, escape from a Tyrannosaurus rex as it chases them down a river. There's a beat in that frightening sequence in which the monster's teeth make an imprint in the rubber raft, because Edwards knows the illusion of computer effects requires some sense of the tactile to remain believable.

Much of that comes through the film's settings. They were clearly shot at real locations and/or on very convincing sets, such as however the filmmakers stage a sequence in which Zora and the not-as-accomplished climber Henry have to rappel down a mountain, infiltrate a pterosaurs' nest, and then contend with the beast, a thin line of rope, and gravity. The action and suspense sequences here don't settle for one idea—or dinosaur, as things become hairier—but do find clever ways to raise, alter, or expand the stakes as they progress.

Jurassic World: Rebirth is probably better described as deceptively simple. Sure, its plot and characters are straightforward and fairly generic, but there is a real complexity to how the film concocts and pulls off its assorted action scenes and effects trickery. In this kind of film, nothing else really matters.

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