July 9, 2025 – The sense of wonder is long gone when it comes to seeing dinosaurs on movie screens, but the suspense and scares are still there. Much like a horror film, this seventh film in the Jurassic franchise invites you to guess which characters will survive and which of them will be dinosaur snacks.

Marvel's Black Widow star Scarlett Johansson is the most recognizable star of this film, playing mercenary Zora Bennett, along with her fellow mercenary and boat captain Duncan Kincaid (played by award-winning actor Mahershala Ali of “Green Book”). They are hired by ruthless pharmaceutical agent Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend of “Hitman: Agent 47”) to go to a forbidden island full of dangerous dinosaurs to collect biological samples worth a fortune.

Along for the ride is paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey of “Wicked”) Kincaid's crew, more mercenaries, and a family of travelers picked up along the way, Reuben Delgado (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo of “The Magnificent Seven”) his daughters Teresa (Luna Blaise of “Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe”) and Isabella (Audrina Miranda) as well as Teresa's stoner boyfriend, Xavier Dobbs (David Iacono of “Hungry”).

While Bennett, Kincaid and Krebs lead a team to collect the samples, the others journey to the part of the island where they hope to be rescued after being shipwrecked. Both journeys become trials of survival as the dinosaurs pick them off one by one. In addition to the usual dinosaurs, there are freakish genetically modified hybrids created long ago during misguided research in an ill-fated lab on the island.

The story is reminiscent of the original film, “Jurassic Park.” Several scenes reminded me of that 1993 film, like a bad guy accidentally driving his jeep into a dinosaur. The original movie was far-fetched science fiction, but this one is far less believable in many ways. If you suspend your disbelief and just go along for the thrill ride it is an O.K. adventure story.

The story is weak, but the acting is good, and the main characters are interesting. While Krebs is a one-dimensional villain, there is an interesting dynamic between Reuben Delgado and his daughter's boyfriend, Xavier, who turns out to be paradoxically both lazy and heroic. While the clumsy attempt to create interesting back stories for Bennett and Kincaid, doesn't really work, Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali have the acting chops to breathe a lot of life into those characters on their own. Jonathan Bailey also turns in a good performance as a kindly scientist who becomes a reluctant adventurer.

While there is some suspense and also some scares in this movie, there is a lot of graphic carnage that I really did not care to see, but I suppose that is to be expected in this kind of movie. For those of you who like 3D movies, this one is being shown in 3D (which features impressive depth) as well as 2D for the first week or two at participating theaters. This movie rates a C+.

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