AS SCARLETT JOHANSSON LEADS A TEAM INTO TERRIFYING TERRAIN,JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTHHERALDS A BRAND-NEW ERA IN DINOSAUR SCARES. AND, OUT HERE IN THE JUNGLE, THINGS ARE GONNA BE A LOT LESS CIVILISED…

WORDS DAN JOLIN

“This,” beams Jonathan Bailey, “is about as Jurassic as it gets!”

It is late September 2024, a few hours after sunset, and Empire has joined the actor on the backlot of Sky Studios Elstree, where Jurassic World Rebirth is rounding off a full-pelt summer-long shoot. Bailey’s not wrong. We are hit with an overwhelming sense of familiarity. There are the tall wire-fences signposted, “Danger: 10,000 Volts”, which stand in front of thick, tropical foliage. There’s the presence of an electric Jeep which, despite a new paint job, bears that classic Rex-skeleton logo. And, most pertinently, there are the carnivorous dinosaurs. Tonight, says Bailey with a grin, “the Raptors are out”.

The cameras roll and, in character as intrepid paleontologist Henry Loomis, the bespectacled actor steps forward intently. He’s grimed-up and sweat-soaked like his fellow cast members: Scarlett Johansson as military specialist Zora Bennett, Mahershala Ali as her seasoned comrade Duncan Kincaid, and Rupert Friend as Martin Krebs, the morally suspect company-man who’s bankrolled this expedition-gone-horribly-wrong. Together with the dishevelled, shipwrecked family (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, David Iacono, Audrina Miranda) that’s complicated their dino-DNA-harvesting mission on a remote Atlantic island, they stand, frozen in fear, on the forecourt of a long-abandoned gas station as the Velociraptors approach.

Or rather, the Raptors’ stand-ins: a pair of performers stalking forwards in black bodysuits, their heads bobbing beneath long-snouted helmets detailed with the deadly predators’ distinctive features. Friend points his pistol at them. They pause, spooked, then back away, disappearing into the misty night. “Yeah, you better run!” Friend yells, but Bailey cautions him. “No, that wasn’t the gun,” he says. “It was something else.” We might be back on very familiar territory, but there’s something new lurking in its flora. Something worse. Something even the Raptors fear.

It’s really a horror film,” says director Gareth Edwards, his still-boyish features poking out the top of a long raincoat. He’s talking here about the original Jurassic Park, but the fact he’s expressing this while in the midst of making his own Jurassic movie suggests to Empire it’s a mission statement for Rebirth, too. “It’s the sort of horror you enjoy, rather than stuff that will traumatise you forever,” he continues. “Like the way people enjoy fairground rides. But it’s full-on darkness, right?”

Covert-ops expert Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) and paleontologist Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) hang out;

Director Gareth Edwards gets stuck in.

The Spinosaurus attacks;

Aside from his previous gargantuancreature features (2010’s self-funded guerrilla debut Monsters and 2014’s Godzilla) and his experiences in the sci-fi sphere (2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, 2023’s The Creator), the Nuneaton-born filmmaker’s Jurassic fervour and knowledge make him especially qualified to take on its sixth sequel. He reflects fondly on first seeing the ’93 original when he’d just turned 18. “There’s a dotted line in the history of cinema: ‘Before’ and ‘After Jurassic Park’,” he says. And in his own life, too: Jurassic Park’s ground-breaking, photo-real creature CGI was one of the reasons he went on to work in visual effects, before striking out as a director.