“Really?”

I’m not going to over-elaborate in this section. In prior posts I have discussed some of the inconsistencies in the film. Here I will mention a few that I haven’t yet gotten around to, which leaves about two topics.

The CG is at times an issue, but at times I was surprised it worked so well. Sadly, the reason CG usually doesn’t work as well as it could have less to do with actual computer technology and other film trends. Even more surprising was the occasional actual practical effect like the dying Apatosaurus.

The implementation of the Phase One: Real World order rolls out slower than the execution of Order 66 in Revenge of the Sith, as quite a bit of screentime passes before the last employee (the gyrosphere operator) hears about it.

What Works

In parsing through many smaller moments in the larger sections there are similarly not many elements I enjoyed that didn’t get mentioned. The first thing that bears saying is that Trevorrow successfully transitions from a small film with a fantastical element, Safety Not Guaranteed, to a fantastical story with smaller elements here.

As mentioned above the use of some practicals is greatly appreciated, and of course, I love that this was a film that brought the series back to its roots of a being a park of dinosaurs (which is coincidentally the Brazilian title), which two and three kind of skipped.

The pulse-pounding elements are also there aside from youthful wonder. Many of the at-the-screen 3D-aimed scares worked on me more than once, and the ACU (Asset Containment Unit) members’ deaths being accompanied by the sound of flatlining as they monitored their vitals was especially effective.

Character’s deaths can be among the trickiest things to handle in films. The handling of a death scene, like the genres of horror and comedy, can be highly subjective. The death of Zara (Katie McGrath) in the clutches of a Pterodactyl seems to hover in the gray area between comedy and horror, and it’s not a wonder its received a disparate range of reactions.

The reasons this scene works for me are myriad, among them being the morbid sense of humor, it’s the schadenfreude of taking out an annoying character, but the main reason is that it takes what is not inherently a threatening family of the dinosaur kingdom and really renders them terrifying by the torturous ordeal it puts her through, which ups the stakes for the other chases and battles, namely the one Claire ends, saving Grady, with cool confidence and a flurry of well-placed shots.

This series concludes tomorrow with Part 8: Conclusion.