REVIEW: Jurassic World Rebirth (2025)

Movie Reviews

The best part of Jurassic World Rebirth is the teaser for The Odyssey that plays before it. Well, it’s either the Odyssey teaser or the fact that Scarlett Johansson is incapable of looking anything but maddeningly sexy; she may not like that, but there’s nothing anyone can do about it. The movie itself may have unseated Fallen Kingdom as the worst Jurassic Park sequel yet (in terms of objective quality; the one I hate the most is still Jurassic Park III); it’s absolutely soulless, blindingly stupid, dull as dishwater, devoid of suspense, and unconcerned with making the audience identify with anyone. The special effects are occasionally good, which is a plus, I guess, but it’s not worth the two-plus hours of your time you need to devote to a film like this.

Twelve years after that annoying little brat from Fallen Kingdom unleashed dinosaurs on the world and killed countless people, the dinosaurs have mostly died out again, unable to adapt to Earth’s changed environment. (Proud of yourself now, missy?) The remaining beasts now reside on islands close to the equator, which is the only environment in which they can survive. A pharmaceutical company has discovered a new medication that can prevent heart disease; the hitch is that the medication needs three ingredients to work: DNA samples from three species of dinosaurs. Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), the head of the company, hires Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) and her team of mercenaries to escort paleontologist Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) and himself to the dinosaur islands to get the samples, which proves to be even more dangerous than they thought. Meanwhile, a dad (Manuel García-Rulfo) takes his daughters – and his older girl’s idiot boyfriend – on a sailing trip that leads them into the dinosaurs.

Jurassic World Rebirth is a bloated mess largely because one of those two plotlines I mentioned is completely unnecessary, and as you probably guessed, it’s the one I devoted one short sentence to. The shipwrecked family lifts right out of the story; there’s nothing any of them do that can’t either be removed or performed by a character from the Scarlett Johansson plot. Moreover, they’re annoying and downright jerky, which makes it hard to sympathize with them. The setup for this era of the Jurassic Park world is that the dinosaurs now only live close to the equator on a few islands, and this region has been blocked off by the world’s governments, which is the smartest, most realistic thing in the movie. So, the father decides to take his daughters on a shortcut through illegal dinosaurs-eat-people land when they go on vacation, reasoning that it should be safe because they weren’t eaten all the other times he stupidly put his children in danger. Well, this time, their number is up, and an aquatic dinosaur called the Mosasaurus capsized their boat, which they miraculously survive.

And wouldn’t you know it, they get attacked by the very Mosasaurus that Scarlett Johansson and her team are tracking, so the family is rescued. Immediately, they start complaining, demanding answers to any question they ask, insulting the people who saved their lives, and generally acting like they own the place. Without giving too much away, once they get to one of the islands, the two groups are separated – and I mean perfectly separated, as in the family is in one place, and Scarlett Johansson and company are in another. So… why have them in the movie? Why not just follow the others and have them experience everything the family does? They could have shaved a good hour of screen time off of this sucker and turned Jurassic World Rebirth into a tight, 100-minute adventure. Is it that there’s an unwritten rule saying the Jurassic Park movies must have kids because the kids in the first one were great? Why? There have been good adventure movies that were just about adults. Like, remember King Kong, where a bunch of grown-ups and no kids go to a mysterious island and face all kinds of dangers, including long-lost dinosaurs? It was pretty successful.

That isn’t to say Jurassic World Rebirth would have been good if they cut the family; it would just be slightly better, if only because it would be shorter. The other plot is dull and has no entry point for a human connection. All of the characters are boring mannequins, there to fulfill a stock role in the story: the action hero(ine), the humanitarian scientist, the evil corporate guy, the secondary action hero who is entirely devoted to the main one, the glorified extras who exist to be eaten by dinosaurs to fool the audience into thinking this movie has stakes. And the acting does nothing to make up for this. Scarlett Johansson is a fantastic actress; watch her three Woody Allen films, which are all very different from each other, to see her range (and three great movies). But you can tell she knows Jurassic World Rebirth is a lousy movie that’s beneath her talent; she giggles almost non-stop, even during scenes that are supposed to reveal her character’s emotional scars and regrets. (I like to think she’s saying, “ Easiest twenty mil I ever made,” to herself as she does this.)  She lost a member of her team on her last mission, and when she brings it up, it doesn’t seem like she cares. Rupert Friend and Jonathan Bailey are blander than expired Weetabix, and the shipwrecked family switches between being boring and obnoxious.  The only one who occasionally shows some emotion is Mahershala Ali, who plays Johansson’s second-in-command, and it’s only in a couple of contrived situations that don’t have the impact they would have if they were earned.

And it’s not like spectacle is going to save Jurassic World Rebirth because it just isn’t there. The special effects are sometimes good (and really, really not at other times), but there’s no sense of awe like there was in Jurassic Park; most of the sequels at least attempt to recapture it (not that they succeed), but Gareth Edwards doesn’t even bother. The whole subplot with that genetically altered Alien Dinosaur they were touting has nothing to do with the plot and exists just to up the stakes, which they didn’t need to do because – and I’ll say this in its favor – Jurassic World Rebirth actually has some new dinosaurs, and the designs are not half bad. (There is one exception: a cutesy little make-a-toy-out-of-this sidekick named Dolores, who is not among the good special effects creations.) They didn’t need to go full-on derivative sci-fi stupid. Speaking of derivative, several scenes are shameless recreations of some of the more exciting moments from Jurassic Park – the Velociraptors in the kitchen, distracting the T-Rex with flares – and none of them are nearly as good as the ones we love. But that’s what Jurassic World Rebirth is: a cheap attempt at recreating a landmark cinematic experience that doesn’t understand what made the original special.

Let us know what you thought of Jurassic World Rebirth in the comments!

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