Claire: You think it'll scare the kids?
Masrani: The kids? This will give the parents nightmares.
Masrani: The kids? This will give the parents nightmares.
WARNING: Spoilers are unmarked.
Film:
- Yes, Jurassic World is now OPEN. This means that there are HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE around DINOSAURS as convenient snacks for when the shit inevitably hits the fan.
- The Indominus rex is a deliberate In-Universe example. She's depicted as a highly intelligent, incredibly powerful, and unstoppably violent killing machine that even has streaks of sadism and gives off definite vibes of It Can Think. In essence, she combines the brute strength of a T. rex with the intelligence of a Velociraptor, various qualities of God knows how many other creatures, and the mindset of a Serial Killer.
- She's capable of camouflaging herself. Can you say "Paranoia Fuel"?
- She has dexterous hands. With thumbs. Which she uses to grab people on multiple occasions.
- "What happened to the sibling?"
"She ate it." - The scary fact that she's killing anything that moves not for food. But for fun. And one of her victims, an Apatosaurus (aka a friendly herbivore), is still alive when Owen and Claire finds her...
- Not only is she killing for sport, but she seems to have developed a taste for human flesh. The only time we ever see her eat her prey is when it's a human. And the only time we see her actively track prey, as opposed to just stumbling across it, is when she follows Zack and Gray's scent to the abandoned garage.
- The Indominus gives several hints of high intelligence beyond mere animal self-awareness, but one of the most chilling happens right after the Mitchell boys escape her by jumping off the cliff into the lake. Despite being raised in complete isolation and having never seen a body of water before, she's still smart enough to stand perfectly still and watch the water for a considerable length of time, waiting to see if they come up for air. Only the fact that Zack was smart enough to keep himself and Gray underwater for as long as their lungs could hold out saved them. The intensity of the Indominus's expression while she's watching the water is terrifying. Out of sight is not out of mind for this creature.
- This may be the most terrifying aspect of the Indominus above all. She's ferociously powerful, incredibly fast, and frighteningly intelligent, but think to all the dinosaur threats in the past. They were killing for food, in self-defense or defense of young, or because the humans were unfortunate enough to stumble into their territory; even the raptors are motivated by instinct. The Indominus actually takes pleasure from the pain of other creatures. As shown above, she doesn't even have to seal the deal to be satisfied, she just has to mangle them good. This "dinosaur" is canonically Ax-Crazy. This is a dinosaur serial killer.
- Word of God implies she has human DNA. It greatly explains her intelligence... and her sadism.
- She appears to have climbed over her fence, only for it to be revealed that she's been inside the whole time and left those claw marks as a distraction to get her handlers right where she wants them. Clever girl...
- The Mosasaurus. She's a sixty-foot-long monster who eats great white sharks for lunch. And, most horrifyingly of all, apart from the (slightly) exaggerated size and back ridges, she's quite possibly the most accurate animal in the park. That's right, a monster like this existed in real life. She also eats the Indominus, the Big Bad of this movie.
- The scene wherein the park's pterosaurs have escaped and descend upon terrified tourists in Main Street. And when we say "the park's pterosaurs," we mean ALL of the park's pterosaurs.
- Zara, Claire's assistant, gets carried off, then dropped. Fortunately, she lands safely... in the waters of the Mosasaurus tank.
- The Pteranodon gets into the water to drown her and, after a lot of struggle, they both get chomped down by Mosey. And yes, she was still alive. It easily ranks right up there with Eddie Carr's demise as the most horrible death scene in the franchise, especially for how long her suffering goes on.
- The Pteranodon attacking her after she fell into the water was possibly a stroke of Fridge Brilliance as they are fish eaters — her thrashing around possibly reminded it of a fish more than anything else in its panicked state, so it tried eating her instead of killing her.
- A few points during this attack show folks being repeatedly stabbed in the chest by the Pteranodons' beaks. It's unlikely that any of these individuals survived (and one who potentially did appears to be missing an eye).
- The Indominus rex killing a worker off-screen. Masrani, Lowery, and Vivian can hear him screaming in agony in the Control Room. In the film proper, you can also hear the bones breaking and crunching.
- A few seconds after, though, while it is partially obscured by trees, you can just make out the Indominus having the worker's body in its mouth, grabbing one of his legs, jerking it off and then swallowing the remains.
- To anyone who still doesn't like the film's premise, just remember: It could have been worse...
- The whole idea of dinosaur/human hybrids did in fact come to life at (fittingly enough) Universal's Halloween Horror Nights back in 2002 at Islands of Adventure's Jurassic Park area, and it was just as scary as you could imagine.
- The whole idea of dinosaur/human hybrids did in fact come to life at (fittingly enough) Universal's Halloween Horror Nights back in 2002 at Islands of Adventure's Jurassic Park area, and it was just as scary
- You are Claire and you are driving an ambulance to safety with your nephews inside. Suddenly, a Velociraptor crashes into the cab's lateral window with her head a few inches from you. That's a good reason to scream.
- The pterosaurs end up attacking the petting zoo. And even worse... children are much, much easier for them to carry than adults, right?
- Several tourists are thrown into the aquarium. You can perfectly hear a woman screaming in terror.
- John Hammond's statue. While it's a nice touch to the creator of Jurassic Park (and to Richard Attenborough), Colin Trevorrow stated that the sculpture could be seen as both heartwarming and creepy, depending on what angle you're looking at.
- The very first scene of the film starts out almost cute, as you see an egg hatching in a little laboratory, not dissimilar to the first movie. And then, ten seconds in, you find out what's hatching out of the egg: The I. rex. And she's right next to the egg of her sibling, whom we know she has eventually eaten. The way in which the scene is shot makes it look like she's already plotting the park's destruction.
- Another, equally terrifying interpretation that doubles as a Tear Jerker: Look at I. rex's body language. Her eye is darting around, she's tapping her claws on the eggshell, she's shaking like a leaf. She may actually not be plotting... instead, she may be terrified of her new surroundings and, unlike other dinosaurs (since she's not a naturally-occurring species, being instead a genetically-engineered abomination) has no parents of her own species or surrogate parents, like the raptors have in Owen, to comfort her. Kind of puts her actions in a whole new perspective...
- The soundtrack piece "The Dimorphodon Shuffle." Comical title notwithstanding, it certainly invokes the feeling of being chased by a swarm of winged monsters that want to tear you apart and eat you. Same goes for its sort of sequel, "Love in the Time of Pterosauria."
- The way the I. rex makes herself known to Zach and Gray.Gray: We shouldn't be here. And there's five dinosaurs.
Zach: Aren't you supposed to be a genius or something? Look. [counts off the Ankylosauruses] One, two, three, four.
[One of the grazing Ankylosauruses suddenly has an "Oh, Crap!" face while Gray points to the reflection on the Gyrosphere]
Gray: [appropriately frightened] Five.- This is followed by I. rex rendering an Ankylosaurus helpless by flipping it onto its back, then biting its head off. It then wraps its jaws around the diameter of the gyrosphere and bashes it against the ground repeatedly, while the kids are still inside and watching the whole thing.
- When I. rex begins to target the two. Claire, unfortunately, attempts to call them, and Zach tries to reach for the phone, vibrating noisily on the gyrosphere's glass below their heads. As Zach attempts to reach the phone, Gray tries to get his brother's attention to what's in front of them. Zach then looks, and there we see the rex's pupil staring straight at the two of them◊.
- When I. rex begins to target the two. Claire, unfortunately, attempts to call them, and Zach tries to reach for the phone, vibrating noisily on the gyrosphere's glass below their heads. As Zach attempts to reach the phone, Gray tries to get his brother's attention to what's in front of them. Zach then looks, and there we see the rex's pupil staring straight at the two of them
- Then true to her nature, she toys with them by sinking one of her claws straight through the sphere, and slowly turning it so the two would be facing her. She is deliberately taunting the two that yes, they are ABOUT TO DIE.
- This is followed by I. rex rendering an Ankylosaurus helpless by flipping it onto its back, then biting its head off. It then wraps its jaws around the diameter of the gyrosphere and bashes it against the ground repeatedly, while the kids are still inside and watching the whole thing.
- Zara being dunked into the water by a Pteranodon and fished out over and over, before getting eaten alive by the Mosasaurus.
- Made even worse when you think about the fact that she was Swallowed Whole, so she probably STILL wasn't dead. She'd stay alive long enough to know she was being digested, before finally suffocating.
- Worse still, remember that Mosasaurus has an extra set of sharp, backwards-curved teeth set in the roof of her mouth, which would have shredded anything going down. Poor Zara's final moments must have very, very painful, on top of everything else.
- Congratulations, Eddie Carr; you no longer have the cruelest protagonist death in the Jurassic Park franchise.
- The poor Pteranodon that got eaten with Zara lets out an absolutely hellish death cry and as the Mosasaurus splashes back down into the water you can see the pterosaur feebly attempting to flap her wings (perhaps in a futile effort to escape) implying that she's not even dead yet.
- And let's not leave out that Gray and Zach are right there, witnessing the whole spectacle and being helpless to intervene. Considering how their wandering off earlier kind of led to this, since Zara wouldn't have had to endanger herself trying to look for them, and that Zach apparently saw the first Pteranodon coming and ducked while taking Gray with him, but couldn't do the same for Zara as she was just out of reach, it has to be very traumatising for the boys to absorb.
- Made even worse when you think about the fact that she was Swallowed Whole, so she probably STILL wasn't dead. She'd stay alive long enough to know she was being digested, before finally suffocating.
- The memetically awesome website went through a rather frightening makeover when the film officially came out. A cheery little message appears when you visit the site of Mr. DNA telling everyone that everything is under control and the Park will be back to normal in no time. Park Capacity dwindles down from 94% to 17% (a number that keeps dropping), either because people are being evacuated or because they're being devoured. The Park Cams (usually dull as dirt) are now filled with panicked tourists and employees running for their lives, while others have been completely shut down.
- A particularly nasty example from the Park Cams: The Spinosaurus Cam shows an overhead shot of Main Street, from a balcony. We can see some people's hands on the balcony, moving in a way that makes it look as though they're holding on for dear life, as though something is physically trying to drag them away. Suddenly, the scene glitches and these people are gone. Now remember what was attacking Main Street... the pterosaurs... you may panic now...
- For a split second before the glitch, one of the above people (appearing to be a child) seems to be trying to jump off the balcony, as if thinking it’s Better to Die than Be Killed.
- The cameras are reminiscent of those in Five Nights at Freddy's, which often glitch out. But instead of the life of a single night guard up against five animatronics possessed by both the raging ghosts of murdered children and malfunctioning A.I, it's thousands and thousands of innocent tourists and park staff against the most terrifying dinosaur in existence, which is willing to kill everything on the island, because it can.
- Interestingly enough, the capacity recently went up to 19%, then 20%.
- And then it keeps fluctuating day by day, sometimes even going up to 22%. Fans have theorised that this means that not only is the park still open, but the incident actually didn't discourage some tourists from coming back. Though the increase also may have counted emergency rescue workers arriving as "tourists" and some tourists might have gone back trying to find loved ones.
- A particularly nasty example from the Park Cams: The Spinosaurus Cam shows an overhead shot of Main Street, from a balcony. We can see some people's hands on the balcony, moving in a way that makes it look as though they're holding on for dear life, as though something is physically trying to drag them away. Suddenly, the scene glitches and these people are gone. Now remember what was attacking Main Street... the pterosaurs... you may panic now...
- The way the I. rex freed itself from the cell is very creepy when you think about it. Owen discovered claw marks on the wall while Claire found out that there was no thermal signature inside the paddock, suggesting only one conclusion: she somehow climbed over the walls and escaped. As Owen and paddock supervisor Nick get inside the cell to examine the claw marks while Claire, in a panic, informs Lowery that "the asset is out of containment," Lowery then tells her that the tracking device shows the I. rex is still inside the cage, right there with Owen and the two members of staff. As Nick opens the door to get out, the I. rex attacks, killing a worker as people in the control room listen to his anguished screams, before running after Owen, bashing her way out of the cell and killing Nick who ran out earlier. The sheer plan that the I. rex cooked up to let herself out of the cell is nothing short of terrifying, showing that not only It Can Think, but also carry the action out with ruthless efficiency. Again, clever girl.
- The terrified tone in Vivian's voice when she says "It's in the cage! It's in there with you!"
- The way Nick dies in particular is horrifying. He hides in front of a car, which the I. rex soon figures out and knocks the car out of the way, exposing him. He then looks at Owen with a look of pure defeat before getting eaten in one single chomp.
- It's even more terrifying when you realise that this is the first time we are being introduced to the I. rex's sadism. She obviously knew that Nick was there and could have easily simply walked around to the front of the car and snatched him up without even trying. Instead, she pulls back to give him a false sense of hope before flipping the car out of the way and then waits just long enough for Nick to realise how screwed he is before chomping down.
- To attest to the level of intelligence, consider how long the I. rex concealed that it didn't have white skin.
- Though considering she doesn't use her camouflaging very much, even when it would be useful, would hint that she doesn't actually know that she's doing it, which considering she had no parents or really anyone to teach her how to do anything, is a definite possibility.
- Speaking of, the scene where the ACU team discovers that the I. rex removed her tracking device, along with a chunk of her own skin. Seconds later, blood drips onto them from overhead foliage. Then they hear a rustling noise from the nearby trees as the monster slowly emerges, and they realise... "IT CAN CAMOUFLAGE!" Cue the I. Rex effortlessly giving the ACU team what is essentially the Dinosaur equivalent of a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
- Rexy's entrance before the final fight. Claire orders Lowery to open the padlock, grabs a flare, and takes a few steps in. You can just make out the nearest trees and ferns, but otherwise there's this wall of darkness beyond. Then the flare's light is reflected in a pair of eyes far off the ground as something enormous slowly stalks forward with earth-shaking tread.
- During the climactic fight, for a brief moment, Rexy goes limp and, for a terrifying second, it seems like the old girl has not only been bested, but killed by her younger foe.
- The raptors turning on Owen and the InGen mercenaries after the Indominus communicates with them. The raptors absolutely slaughter almost all of the mercenaries, though Owen and Barry make it out.
- Thanks to the cameras mounted to the raptors' heads, we get to see the whole thing from their point of view. In effect, we are seeing the equivalent of the last moments of EVERY CHARACTER who has ended up as raptor chow (i.e., Jophery, Arnold, Muldoon, Ajay, and the hunters hired by InGen).
- ...and it all takes place in an area of dense jungle and tall grass, the same types of environments where the aforementioned victims met their ends in the first two films.
- Also bear in mind that the scene immediately prior where Barry tells Hoskins, "She looks at what she wants to eat." After communicating with the I. rex, what do the cameras show the raptors turning to look right at? All four lock onto Owen.
- At one point, Barry barely manages to cram himself into a log, only to have Blue biting and clawing her way through it to get at him with incredible ease. If it wasn't for Owen, Barry would have died in a very claustrophobic setting.
- Thanks to the cameras mounted to the raptors' heads, we get to see the whole thing from their point of view. In effect, we are seeing the equivalent of the last moments of EVERY CHARACTER who has ended up as raptor chow (i.e., Jophery, Arnold, Muldoon, Ajay, and the hunters hired by InGen).
- It's subtle, but if you watch the background of Hoskins' scenes, you can see Delta watching him with an eerie level of attention. And it's very, very different than the attention she and her sisters give Owen, instead seeming far more calculating and predatory. This is also around the same time that Owen warns Hoskins about Imprinting and how the raptors will kill anyone besides him if they're given the chance. Well, guess who later gets cornered by Delta after the firefight? Delta seems to specifically zero in on Hoskins, turning him into a blabbering mess as he attempts to communicate with her like Owen often does. She just rips Hoskins' hand off and proceeds to turn him into a blood-spattered mess on the wall. It's quite clear that this raptor has been planning Hoskins' demise for a very long time, and she made it as brutal and bloody as possible.
- Even though he deserved it, Hoskins' death is still rather unsettling. Just hearing his screaming shortly degenerate into gurgling as he's disemboweled can be rather jarring.
- Zach's terrified facial expression when the raptor jumps into the ambulance. It seems like just a regular scared face, but then you realise the only other time he has made that face was when the Indominus was attacking the gyrosphere he and his little brother were in.
- The way Owen realises (and how the film itself visualises it) the Indominus has raptor DNA. As the Indominus speaks to the raptors to convince them to change sides, the Indominus is shown in a position that for a brief instance makes her look exactly like a Velociraptor.
- The raptors themselves go from all focusing on the I. rex to zeroing in on Owen, which the Control Room and we as the audience see through their cameras. Under new management, folks.
- And then the audience is treated to a raptor's POV of its victim's final moments. Remember all of those off-screen raptor deaths in the first two movies? You'll never look at them the same way again.
- The deaths aren't all from the raptors' POV. About half of them are, but the other half are from the POV of the soldiers being murdered, courtesy of their Aliens-style helmet cameras.
- One of the soldiers isn't killed immediately; he's dragged away, kicking and screaming, fighting for his life even though he probably knows he's doomed.
- The fact that the cheery theme park music continues to play, along with the pleasant and calm voice-over explaining that Jurassic World is temporarily being shut down and to proceed calmly to the nearest exit, while people are literally being attacked and killed, is unsettling, to say the least.
- Whatever happened to the people taking the Cretaceous Cruise? Or the other herbivores (Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Parasaurolophus, etc) in the Gyrosphere Valley? We know that I. rex was in the vicinity but when Owen and Claire get there, only the dying sauropods are left...
- The deaths of Masrani and those two ACU troops after the I. rex invades the Aviary, which could rival Zara's in terms of sheer horribleness. For context, one of the troopers nearly falls out of the helicopter before a Pteranodon flies in and kills him, another Pteranodon pecks at the chopper's window, stabbing the other trooper with her beak and killing him instantly, Masrani loses control of the chopper and desperately tries to get back into the air, but he crashes into the aviary. And the minute his chopper hits the ground, it explodes, negating any chances of him surviving.
- You really do have to feel a little sorry for Echo. And Owen. This is the second time he's had to witness one of his raptors being burned alive right in front of him and there's not a damned thing he can do about it. Then, not even ten seconds later, Delta is bitten and flung into a nearby building. Owen's face just seems to crumble after each incident, showing that he's fighting to keep himself together at this point.
- The scene where Owen, Claire, and the others are in the control room watching the vitals of the ACU team flat-line one by one as the Indominus mows them down was bad enough. But did it remind anybody else of anything?
- A bunch of professional badasses, ill-equipped for the threat they're facing, going down one by one while their leadership watches helplessly? Yep.
- Seriously, their deaths were darker than any we've seen in the franchise thus far due to how brutal they were. The first to go is Commander Hamada, simultaneously drowned and crushed to death underfoot. After that, they drop like flies, thrown against trees, their bones shattered from the Indominus's tail swipes, and worst of all the last two to die are eaten alive.
- How about the one guy who got shredded to bits with blood spilling around like rain, with only the tree branches to cover what barely classifies as a Gory Discretion Shot?
- Masrani's first visit to the Indominus's enclosure. As he approaches the area, he notices ominous signs that would give any CEO nightmares. The first sign that something is not right is that walls are currently being reconstructed to accommodate the I. rex's size, as the Indominus is said to have grown bigger than expected. The second sign are the reports that she's being aggressive to the animal handlers to the point of nearly ripping off an arm. The third sign are the cracks on the window of the viewing pen, with a confirmation from Claire that she's been trying to break the glass. The fourth sign is the Indominus herself, barely visible in the foliage but its presence is enough to give Masrani the chills. The fifth sign, and the kicker for Masrani, is that there used to be a backup sibling of the Indominus and the Indominus ate her. These signs are the reasons why Masrani wants Owen to inspect the enclosure's security in the first place.
- When Owen, Claire, and the boys find their way into Henry Wu's lab, they see a bunch of other creatures he created, including a feathered caiman lizard, an axolotl with a sail on its back, a strangely intelligent chameleon, and a snake with two heads. The Nightmare Fuel doesn't come from these creatures themselves (they're actually kind of cute), it instead stems from the implication that Wu has been doing this for much longer than we realise...
- And then there's a computer screen, practically a background element, which shows other hybrid dinosaurs. The Indominus is just the beginning...
- The lab itself has a montage scene of some of the creatures used in the Indominus' creation. We see cuttlefish, tropical frogs, a few snakes... and a human spinal cord.
- Of all the people InGen could have sent to be their head of security on the island, they sent Hoskins. Hoskins, the greedy and short-sighted profiteer with a misplaced enthusiasm for genetically-modified living weapons and far, far less knowledge of how animals really behave than he seems to think he has. There was barely anything that went wrong that he didn't somehow make worse.
The Trailers
- The first official trailer has several moments.
- The I. rex's whole body is never shown onscreen. All we get are ominous glimpses.
- Toward the middle and end of the trailer, a slow, ominous piano cover of the original Jurassic Park theme can be heard.
- The ending of the trailer. Claire has an Oh, Crap! moment upon realising what the I. rex is capable of, there's a brief shot of Owen running from the I. rex, Claire holding the flare and staring into Rexy's paddock, a crowd of tourists (Zach and Gray included) running and screaming from a then-unknown attacker and to top it all off...Claire: RUN!
- And at the very end (just before the Raptor Squad awesomeness) we see Gray, seemingly all alone, hiding from the I. rex.
- The Global Trailer has a long list:
- A tracking implant is placed in all the dinosaurs in the park. The Indominus rex was smart enough to claw out her implant and lead the soldiers tracking her into a trap.
- The Indominus appears directly responsible for a helicopter crashing into the dome containing the pterosaurs, meaning she potentially engineered their escape, as we observe her roar directly at the pterosaurs and they begin flying away.
- There is a tense scene where Owen and the kids are hiding out in a store, and the Indominus is trying to grab them and drag them out with her claws. Super-Persistent Predator, the Indominus is.
- "Something's wrong; they're communicating." The context of the scene is when Owen and his partner are hunting the Indominus rex with the raptors. We know the raptors can communicate... so what are they communicating with?
- Compounded by a scene later in the trailer where we see a raptor catch and bite one of the Park's security. Either it's one of Hoskins' men (there was strong disagreement between him and Owen on how to handle the situation with the Indominus) sent to kill the raptors on orders, or a normal park security member. Either way, it conjures up old memories of the raptors in their original antagonistic role.
- The "they're communicating" line also comes before a scene of Indominus roaring at the Pteranodons followed by a scene where they start attacking humans, making it look like she's talking the other animals into attacking people.
- To top it all off, the trailer ends with a Pteranodon being eaten by the Mosasaurus.
- THIS TV Spot. Probably the scariest advert for the film yet. It starts off relatively innocent, with an announcer (apparently advertising the park instead of the film) telling the viewers that they'll be going on a journey where their family will create "unforgettable memories", punctuating it with "Welcome to Jurassic World." Then the screen glitches and reveals the pterosaur invasion, repeating the words "Welcome to Jurassic World." Then it shows Claire preparing to release the T. rex and the Raptor Squad attacking people, repeating "Welcome to Jurassic World" again, this time with the voice distorting. Then we see more images of the rampages, the Pteranodons attacking the petting zoo, Owen being chased by the I. rex and this time only repeating the word "Welcome" over and over in a voice that's getting more and more and more distorted before ending with "Welcome to Jurassic World" and showing the logo.
- TV spot #15 starts out almost cute, as you see an egg hatching in a little laboratory, not dissimilar to the first movie. And then ten seconds in, you find out what's hatching out of the egg. The I. rex. And she stares around as the horrible things she does as an adult flash by in rapid cuts, the people she kills, the hundreds of deaths she causes, the trauma she gives to the core group, clipping back to her every few seconds. It's downright creepy, as you can see the eye and almost KNOW that already she's planning something big.
- Another terrifying detail: If you listen closely, there's a horribly distorted, near inhuman voice screaming "RUN" all over the trailer.
Masrani Global's backdoor
- Late in 2015, the Viral Marketing Masrani Global website gained a backdoor terminal, revealing some secrets of the park's story. Said secrets are rather horrifying, especially with the proper Fridge Horror. The most notable example? The fact that the Indominus was not the first hybrid creature Wu made... and that one of them was an "accident" left on Isla Sorna. The Spinosaurus was a hybrid, explaining why it had no pupils, wasn't on InGen's official list of assets, how it was able to easily kill the sub-adult Tyrannosaur, and (retroactively) why it looked and behaved so differently from the real thing.
- Additionally, sometime after Jurassic Park III was when Hoskins was promoted to InGen's head of security by Masrani, who had acquired InGen in 1997 after the passing of John Hammondnote — yep, they've been in it together for years.
Other
- This fan trailer which meshes the film with Alien. The fact that it fits so well just makes it creepier.
