Warning: This review may contain, what are considered by some, spoilers.

In last week’s post I said that Steven Spielberg isn’t a horror director and so that the first Jurassic Parkmovie did not have the degree of horror as did Michael Crichton’s book of the same name. And I don’t think Spielberg is any more a director of horror movies today than he was when he made the first Jurassic Park film. However, the latest of the Jurassic Park films, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which I saw last weekend, contains a lot more of the horror element than probably any of the other sequels, even more than the original novel. Believe it or not, it has a gothic theme to it. How much more horror can a science fiction film such as that get?

Although the movie starts off with an expedition on Isla Nublar, the island that the dinosaur “themepark” was re-built on but then destroyed in the previous installment, it soon enough moves to the estate of a Benjamin Lockwood. Lockwood was friends and business partners with John Hammond, the founder of the first park who was featured in the first two films. Much of the movie takes place on the estate that consists of a towering, stone mansion (more like a palace). Many of the dinosaur attacks occur in this setting and a lightning storm adds to the gothic horror element.

But it’s not only dark mansions and thunder-and-lightning storms that make gothic horror movies, including gothic sciencefictionhorror movies like Fallen Kingdom. As with gothic literature, this movie involves a sinister secret locked away (literally) in the manor. There’s even a more straight forward Frankenstein-esque theme to the film when one of the characters refers to a genetically engineered creature as a patchwork of various species of dinosaurs. To add to this, (Warning! Warning! Potential-spoiler alert!) like in another famous gothic story, one by Poe, there is a fall in this movie and it isn’t just the island of Isla Nublar as the movie’s title suggests. Fallen Kingdom has a lot of intense action and thrills both on the island and off it and, therefore, at the Lockwood estate.

The characters and their motives are well-developed considering this is an action-oriented film that is not directly based on any of Crichton’s books but only on their concepts. There are very few characters from the books in this movie (as in the first Jurassic World). However, the heroes of Jurassic World, Claire and Owen, return in this film. They lead an expedition to transport the dinosaurs of the island, which is threatened by a live volcano, to a sanctuary where they can live freely without threat to anyone. Or so the expeditioners are told. Behind the plan of the project is a much more commercial and less humanitarian agenda.

While staying true to the main concepts of the first Jurassic Park film, this movie takes it’s own unique course, particularly with the gothic theme, rather than simply rehashing on the first movie like Jurassic World did. I said in the last post that I preferred Jurassic World over Fallen Kingdom. However, I have to admit that I only saw the former once which was during its release three years ago and I don’t have a sharp memory for details. But, when I refreshed myself on it through some research, it occurred to me how much of the movie was a rehash of Jurassic Park (as good as it was in other respects). So, especially considering that it’s not directly based on any of the books, as the previous movie wasn’t, I have to say that Fallen Kingdom wasthe better of the two. One of the few things I had fault with this movie, though, was that it could have given more time to the attack scenes involving the larger dinosaurs like the Tyrannosaurus Rex and the Mosasaurus.

I’m not sure if the gothic horror elements were Steven Spielberg’s idea, since he did not screenwrite or direct the movie but executive produced it. But these elements are twists in the franchise that bring out the terror that Jurassic Park the novel did. That works for me!

Have you seen Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom? What did you think of the gothic theme? Feel free to leave your comments in the box below.

Until next time . . .