Why Horror Fans Should Be Excited About JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM
Mike Sprague
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In the months leading up to the release of the upcoming Jurassic World sequel, I was for the most part bored by all the talk about this new film, feeling the franchise ran its course back with the third “Park” sequel. That said, I did enjoy the first “World” film – if only for one scene. Allow me to set it up for you…I was pretty much forced to go see Jurassic World in theaters, and truth be told I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t think it was anything special either. Then the kid from Insidious said “We need more teeth” and the redhead from The Village told Tom Cruise’s sidekick from The Mummy to “Open Paddock 9.”
Holy. Shit. From there until the end credits I felt like a kid again, cheering on the victory of a CGI dinosaur. To put it lightly, it was movie magic at it’s finest. Yet I still couldn’t get myself excited to see Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. That is until that killer final trailer premiered earlier this year (see it again below). Now I’m all for this film and fully plan to be there opening night.
But as creepy and intense as the final trailer was, it has me wondering just how scary will the new film be? Well, if we can go by what producer/co-writer Colin Trevorrow and Hollywood head-honcho Steven Spielberg have to say about the film, evidently it is going to be half disaster movie and half horror movie. In fact, Trevorrow told EW earlier this summer that if the original movie was an action-adventure flick, then this sequel is a “horror-suspense film.” But that’s not all. Executive producer Steven Spielberg says, “It has a wonderfully, deliciously scary third act,” and the magazine itself went so far as to say that the film’s “second half actually becomes more akin to a haunted house movie with the characters trapped in a giant, creepy estate with a bloodthirsty raptor hybrid.”
Damn, that is one hell of a way to sell the film to horror fans! But really, none of this news is particularly surprising as we had more than an inclination that this sequel was going to skew a bit more horrific once director J.A. Bayona was placed behind the lens. This is because, for those who might not know, Bayona is famous around these parts for helming such horror classics as The Orphanage and A Monster Calls. We’re all fans of Bayona here and it seems Spielberg is too, which is fucking great to know, especially because Mr. Spielberg loves Bayona for all for all the right reasons – most importantly the director’s nack for helming horror.
“J.A. knows how to create terror,” Spielberg says. “But he also knows how to orchestrate it so you’re not brutalized by it, and he has the gift of restraint. But when he needs to open up the throttle, he really knows how.”
No kidding, Steve. I don’t know if you’ve seen Bayona’s The Orphanage but that movie will keep you up for days. And if the director manages to capture even a slight amount of the chills and thrills found within that flick, I can only imagine kids around the globe will be hiding under their covers for months following their theatrical viewings of Jurassic World 2 this summer. And forgive me but, “Moo-Haha.”
On top of all that horror and suspense talk, Jurassic World and The Village star Bryce Dallas Howard adds that the new movie will not be skimping on the carnage either, saying, “What becomes scary about it is it becomes more contained like we have an Indoraptor in a little girl’s bedroom. That’s a kind of hell that we haven’t seen in a Jurassic movie. It’s surreal to see dinosaurs in that kind of an environment. And let me just tell you, there’s so much carnage!”
Yes, you read that right, Ron Howard’s daughter just promised us all that Jurassic World 2 has an abundance of good, old-fashion carnage. And all of this makes me think back to when I saw the original Jurassic Park in theaters as a wee little one. Actually, strike that. My parents knew I was too easily freaked out by any and everything as a snot-nosed brat to see the movie in theaters. But they did buy it for me on glorious VHS as soon as it hit and I tore the film up regularly. And holy hell did it scare me.
Actually, I think many people forget or underappreciated just how fucking scary Spielberg’s original film is. I know I can’t sit in a parked car while it’s raining and not anticipate that I’m going to hear a soft encroaching boom of monster feet in the distance. And I bet you there isn’t a single human that’s worked in an industrial kitchen that hasn’t found themselves there late at night and check the cupboards for raptors – just in case. And this is what I’m hoping the new film will bring back to the franchise: true fear.
In the years before the original Spielberg classic hit, dinos were something that kids loved sure, but the beasts had no amount of fear associated with them. Then Spielberg’s film hit the screen in a big way and the terror of the T-Rex was again unleashed on the Earth. However, in the years since, the same lethargy has come to pass yet again. Dinosaurs are stuffed animals, magnets, cute shirts, and waffle-iron designs.
But they’re not scary. At all. Here’s hoping Bayona changes that this year.
Are you excited about the return of scary-ass dinosaurs in J.A. Bayona’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom? Make sure to hit us up and let us know in the comments below or on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram! The film hits theaters Friday, June 22, 2018.
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