With its horrifying creatures, monomaniacal scientists and suspicion of technological progress, the blockbuster action franchise – and Jurassic World: Rebirth – owes a lot to Gothic storytelling traditions, writes Billie Walker.
‘Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.’ It’s a statement lobbed at John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) by Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) in Jurassic Park (1993) after he witnesses Hammond’s dinosaurs for the first time. But it could just as easily be hurled at Victor Frankenstein, horror’s original egotistical scientist.
When Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in the 19th century, the novel – now known as an early example of both science fiction and Gothic literature – inspired characters attempting to play God for many decades to come. Hammond, and every dinosaur-enthusiast billionaire that takes his place in the blockbuster franchise, all fit this mould. Although most consider Jurassic Park and its successors to be action films, they each have Gothic roots, and can equally be categorised as modern monster movies.
In casting Richard Attenborough as the first of Jurassic Park’s benefactors, director Steven Spielberg made a questionable choice. Turning the arrogant CEO of Michael Crichton’s book into a kindly grandad of genetic engineering moved him further away from the egotistical inventor Frankenstein and closer to Santa Claus. However, as the franchise continued, it has offered many overtly greedy men eager to capitalise on prehistoric apex predators.
One notable edition, in The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), is Hammond’s nephew Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard), a snivelling man who, like Dracula’s servant Renfield before him, cowers in the presence of the creatures he hopes to make money from. It isn’t merely the hubris of those funding expeditions to Jurassic Park and Isla Nublar (where the remaining dinosaurs are kept) that invites comparisons with the Gothic. Spielberg – as a director and, later, producer of these films – understood that in order to set Jurassic Park apart from the aesthetics of natural history and summon both fear and awe, the series must be tinged with horror.
Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025)
Although the original movie is set in vibrant, foliage-dense islands, many scenes take place under the cover of night. Dr. Malcolm first encounters the T. rex after dark, staring into a huge footprint filled with rain water, the reflection of his head miniscule in comparison to a single claw of the beast he has not yet laid eyes on. Suddenly the all-knowing mathematician is drained of his bravado. Even in daylight, Spielberg lays on the horror, referencing Alien (1979) – Ridley Scott’s undisputed blueprint of Gothic sci-fi – when a raptor bursts forth from electrical wires to snap at Ellie (Laura Dern) in much the same way as the titular alien lunged at Ripley (Sigourney Weaver). While Spielberg’s second foray into prehistoric adventures, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, leans more into the action genre, there are still chilling moments. Blood turns waters red twice; the second time, a waterfall becomes a curtain of gore as the remaining adventurers hide behind it, bearing witness to the T. rex’s bloodshed.
Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025)
In The Lost World, Spielberg leads the dinosaurs fully into civilisation, where they wreak havoc like Dracula feeding on Englishmen after his long naval voyage. Stampeding through suburbia and making crowds disperse, the escaped T. rex laps from the swimming pool in someone’s back garden. As the child inside the home awakens to rustling and alerts his parents to the dinosaur’s presence, the darkened face of the T. rex – complete with a toothy grimace – meets the eyes of the family through the son’s bedroom window. Despite being played for laughs, the scene also constitutes domestic horror, since the family are confronted with a beast they had confined to history. Just as Dracula enters the bedrooms of his prey through their windows (see Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 Bram Stoker’s Dracula), the bloodthirsty T. rex follows suit. Dinosaurs are no longer the faraway figures of bedtime stories, but a horrifying, imminent reality.
Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025)
Gothic stories have certain aesthetics, from moonlit sins to decrepit mansions, but at their core they’re about the conflict between modernity and tradition. This is often demonstrated when the canonical beast – whether that be Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster or Mr. Hyde – comes up against civilised society. To make sense of unfathomable creatures, we create laws for them to follow (e.g. vampires’ aversion to garlic). In Jurassic Park, dinosaurs are similarly categorised via their eating habits, behaviour and appearance.
On multiple occasions, first in Jurassic Park and then 25 years later in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018), the Gothic tension between the old and the new is literalised when the prehistoric beast crashes into the paleontological exhibits, which creates an uncanny comparison between living dinosaur and reconstructed skeleton. The image serves as a reminder that this creature is a ghost, forcibly brought back to life by genetic manipulation and fated to haunt the modern world – while being haunted by its own image.
Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025)
In the resuscitation of the franchise, which began with Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World (2015), J.A. Bayona, director of the wildly underrated Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, pays tribute to the series’ Gothic past. After the second prehistoric theme park, Jurassic World, has failed, its surviving experts Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Owen (Chris Pratt) help Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) – another grandfather of genetic engineering – save the dinosaurs from extinction as a volcano is set to erupt on the island. All of the creatures are then transported to holding cells under Lockwood’s isolated mansion.
It’s here that Bayona evokes the Gothic. Lockwood’s organisation has created the ultimate predator: a velociraptor-indominus rex cross that is unveiled in a Frankenstein-esque manner. Zapping sounds ring out as the creature is tasered repeatedly when it’s rolled into an auction house, flashing lights throwing its screeching shadow against the wall. The scene pays homage to Victor Frankenstein’s original moment of creation in the 1931 film adaptation of Frankenstein. It’s as if all spectators on and off screen are watching the beast come to life before our eyes. The sequence culminates in the science experiment climbing onto the roof of Lockwood manor and howling, werewolf-like, at the moon.
Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025)
As the Jurassic Park franchise continues to birth successive monsters and movies, there are always those that fail to learn from the hubris of their predecessors. Braving the island in Jurassic World: Rebirth, a team including Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey and Mahershala Ali are confronted by the dinosaurs that survived the aforementioned volcanic eruption. The franchise has turned Shelley’s core theme – cautioning against those who play God – into an ouroboros of humanity’s arrogance, corruption and greed. Jurassic characters are forever destined to be confronted by creatures they cannot possess or profit from, no matter how hard they try. Jurassic World: Rebirth promises to return its heroes (and villains) to the series’ Gothic roots, conjuring hybrid creations and prehistoric ghosts to terrorise those courageous or stupid enough to run with dinosaurs.
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