The Lost World: Jurassic Park [1997] is Steven Spielberg’s sequel to his blockbuster phenomenon: Jurassic Park. This time around, we’re following Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) as he follows a group of researchers to the park’s second site while another group approaches the island with the intentions of taking the dinosaurs off the island and releasing them onto the mainland.
Darker and meaner. People tend to forget how much darker in tone The Lost World is. The film is set mostly at night and the whole sense of wonderment that was highly prevalent in the first film is completely gone. It jumps straight into the dangerous & higher-staked mission and it doesn’t really look back. This film also has a much higher body count than the first film, as we’re dealing with a lot more main characters and over the course of the run-time, a majority of them are picked off in pretty gruesome onscreen ways.
Very special effects indeed. Just like the first film, the visual effects are outstanding. The mix of animatronics and CGI is still being utilized and in the deep jungle environment Spielberg is once again is able to hide the more shoddy CGI sequences.
Jeff Goldblum is endlessly watchable. Jeff Goldblum is the only returning main character from the first film and he’s front and center here. Goldblum gives us a great performance and even during the ridiculous scenes, he still sells it. Watching his bizarre mannerisms and line delivery is also an absolute blast to watch.
The final act of unkindness. Despite a pretty fantastic and entertaining first two acts, the film stumbles with it’s third. We jump from the film’s continuously deadly jungle environment to the streets and beaches of San Diego where the main characters are chasing after a T-Rex. It’s an interesting concept, but it lacks the focus and the correct tone that it needed to work. The sequence comes out of nowhere and seems almost tacked on, in the end, it also feels like it was created just to be different (“what if dinosaurs were in the city!?”) from the first film.
Criminally underrated but also pales in comparison to the first film.
