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Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park poster

Creature feature

Jurassic Park

1993 · PG-13 · 2h 7m

Curator Score9.2/ 10
An adventure 65 million years in the making.

Release

In theaters
June 11, 1993

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Curator Certificate

9.2

Out of ten

Passed by one curator

Fear5.5
Gore3.4
Atmosphere8.0
Intensity6.5
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Carried by atmosphere, light on gore.

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Jump scares

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A wealthy entrepreneur secretly creates a theme park featuring living dinosaurs drawn from prehistoric DNA. Before opening day, he invites a team of experts and his two eager grandchildren to experience the park and help calm anxious investors. However, the park is anything but amusing as the security systems go off-line and the dinosaurs escape.

Plot summary via TMDB

Genres

adventurescience-fictionhorror

Tags

Content Warnings

Child endangermentAnimal deathEye trauma
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Details

Budget$63M
Box office$1058.5M

Directed by

Steven Spielberg

Cinematography

Dean Cundey

Starring

Sam Neill as Grant · Laura Dern as Ellie · Jeff Goldblum as Malcolm · Richard Attenborough as Hammond · Bob Peck as Muldoon · Martin Ferrero as Gennaro · BD Wong as Wu · Joseph Mazzello as Tim

Production

Amblin Entertainment, Universal Pictures

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Deep Cuts

Context

Is Jurassic Park a horror movie?

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Yes. Jurassic Park is usually filed as a science fiction adventure, and the first act earns that label by showing the dinosaurs as a marvel. Once the park's power goes out, it becomes a creature feature and stays one until the end. From there the film is about people being hunted by animals they cannot outrun or outfight. The big set pieces are built the way horror set pieces are built. The T. rex attack on the stalled tour cars happens at night in the rain, and the film makes you sit through a rippling cup of water and a missing goat before it shows the animal. The raptor sequence in the kitchen is a stalk-and-hide scene with two children as the prey. Spielberg made Jaws eighteen years earlier and uses the same approach here: keep the threat half seen and make the audience wait for it. The film's own rating points the same way. The MPA rated it PG-13 for "intense science fiction terror." That makes it gentler than an R-rated slasher, which is why so many people saw it young and never thought of it as a horror movie. The story comes from Michael Crichton's 1990 novel, which is more violent than the film. Watch Darkly counts it as horror, not horror-adjacent. The adventure frames the story, but fear is what the film is built to deliver.