Walking into another Jurassic movie at this point feels a bit like wandering back onto Isla Nublar after the fences have failed: you have a pretty good idea of what’s coming, and you’re already bracing yourself for the chaos. After the bloated, globe-trotting mess of Fallen Kingdom and Dominion, I honestly wasn’t expecting much from Jurassic World: Rebirth (I even communicated this to the studio rep as I was walking into the screening). But much to my surprise, this film actually works. Not flawlessly, of course, but well enough to remind me why I ever cared about these movies in the first place.
What sets Rebirth apart right away is its willingness to scale things back. Director Gareth Edwards (Rogue One, Godzilla) and screenwriter David Koepp (who penned the screenplay for Spielberg’s original 1994 film) aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel. They’ve stripped away the franchise’s recent obsession with corporate conspiracies and returned to something much simpler: people, on a remote tropical island, trying not to get eaten by creatures both awesome and terrifying. There are no global extinction threats, no smirking Chris Pratt and his quartet of laser-pointer-trained raptors, and no franchise players showing up for cameos. Instead, we get sweat-soaked tension and the constant threat of danger lurking in the underbrush. There’s a real back-to-basics energy here, and it’s honestly refreshing.
The cast is a huge part of why it works. Scarlett Johansson plays Zora Bennett, a former special ops type tasked with leading the mission. She’s competent without being superhuman, and thankfully isn’t stuck in a pointless romantic subplot. Jonathan Bailey impresses as Henry Loomis, a charmingly earnest paleontologist who dreams of dying in a shallow bed of silt so he can be fossilized. His wide-eyed enthusiasm is infectious, and he seems to be the only character who regards the dinosaurs as something more than vicious killing machines or opportunities for capitalist exploitation. Mahershala Ali and Rupert Friend round out the ensemble with dependable gravitas and villainy, respectively, and even the secondary characters — a stranded family led by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo — feel like real people instead of meat for the monsters.
But the real star here is suspense, because for the first time in what feels like forever, a Jurassic movie remembers that dinosaurs are scary. Edwards understands scale and space better than any director since Spielberg, and he employs some of the same techniques that made his Godzilla reboot so thrilling (complete with a visual homage to his earlier work, where a massive creature emerges from the darkness lit only by falling flares). There’s a solid underwater sequence early on that’s all flickers of movement and creeping dread, and multiples setpieces that let shadows, silence, and subtle sound design do most of the heavy lifting. These choices are a massive improvement over the previous three entries, and it’s also worth noting this is probably the best the dinosaurs have looked in the last decade.
That’s not to say everything lands. The new hybrid dinosaur, with its bulbous head and extra limbs, is unsettling to look at but given so little screentime that it still feels less threatening than the obligatory T-rex that shows up around the halfway mark (okay, so maybe there was a cameo from a franchise player, after all). And while most of the visual effects are strong, especially when combined with natural lighting and real locations, there are still a few shots where the digital seams are more noticeable than they should be for a film with this sort of budget. The script also gestures toward deeper ideas, like humanity’s desensitization to dinosaurs in a world where they’ve become just another managed risk, but those ideas fall by the wayside and are never really unpacked or explored in a meaningful way.
But these are minor nitpicks in what otherwise feels like a genuine course correction. Jurassic World: Rebirth understands that the real horror and wonder of dinosaurs comes from their untamed nature and the inherent arrogance of humans trying to control it. It leans into suspense, prioritizes its characters, and remembers that a well-crafted sequence can be more thrilling than sheer, overwhelming spectacle. And honestly, that shift alone makes it feel like a minor miracle. After the increasingly ridiculous trajectory of the last three films, getting a Jurassic movie that understands the power of restraint feels like major progress.
For fans who’ve felt a bit disconnected from this franchise, Rebirth offers a solid, entertaining ride that proves there’s still life in these ancient bones. It doesn’t recapture the awe of Spielberg’s 1993 classic, but it remembers the basics: dinosaurs are cool, people are fragile, and nature always bites back. We’ll call it a welcome step in the right direction.