The franchise that looks to totally reinvent itself with this film, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is set to premiere later this month and is being hailed as a horror/sci-fi epic from early screening reactions. Now, the film held its premiere and reviews have finally begun to trickle online. So, how did Fallen Kingdom do in comparison to the other films in the franchise? In short…

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom currently boasts a 68% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics criticized the acting, plot and characterizations among other aspects — though it was considered an improvement over its predecessor. Check out the review round-up below and keep it locked on Talkies Network for our review of the film coming soon!

John DeFore from The Hollywood Reporter :

Here, working from a script by the last pic’s Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow, Bayona not only nods to the histories of classic monster movies and the legacy of original Jurassic helmer Steven Spielberg; he brings his own experience to bear, treating monsters like actual characters and trapping us in a vast mansion that’s as full of secrets as the site of his breakthrough 2007 film The Orphanage. Audiences put off by some dumb characterizations in the last film have much less to complain about here, while those requiring only some spectacular predators and exciting chase scenes should greet this outing as warmly as its predecessor

Owen Glieberman from Variety :

Where have all the dinosaurs gone? That’s a question that may occur to you during vast stretches of “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” the fifth entry in the “Jurassic” series, and the first that plays less like a thunder-lizard spectacular than like a ’70s disaster movie run amok. Oh, don’t get me wrong: The film provides plenty of encounters with our stomping, gnashing primeval beastly friends — yet for much of “Fallen Kingdom,” they are caged, shackled, sedated, wounded, and otherwise subdued. They’re right up there on screen, but too often they don’t feel like the main event.

Richard Lawson from Vanity Fair :

Having Bayona behind the wheel, rather than Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow (who has a writing credit on the one), helps on that front as well. While the first half of the film is a petty perfunctory rehash of 1997’s The Lost World, with poachers rounding up dinosaurs for profit and a little bit of sport, the second half of Fallen Kingdom does something nifty. Bayona revisits some aesthetics and moods from his lauded 2007 horror film The Orphanage by turning Fallen Kingdom into something of a spooky mansion movie, rainy and atmospheric and full of creeping shadows. It’s an unexpected reduction in scale and commitment to specificity, not what we often see in follows-up to smash hits. But these are proportions that Bayona knows how to work in, and from them he crafts something clever and goofy and jumpy. Of course he’s mandated to enlarge the purview of the film—or, really, of the franchise—by the end, but for a while there he gets to play around on his own terms. It’s a surprising delight.

Gav Murphy from IGN :

J.A. Bayona feels like the perfect director to take control of Fallen Kingdom after proving he can handle large-scale destruction with confidence but is equally capable of delivering intimate scares. There are echoes of his previous works such as The Impossible (big old natural disaster) and The Orphanage (creepy old secret-filled house) in Fallen Kingdom but more impressive is how it draws on further inspirations like Alfred Hitchcock and Hammer horror style suspense. The latter is definitely felt throughout the film and Bayona’s use of light and shadows to create tension is one of the highlights of Fallen Kingdom. Whether it’s a toothy Baryonyx stalking through a tunnel lit by a menacing drop of lava or the claws of the terrifying new Indoraptor illuminated by a child’s night-light, Bayona’s horror seems classy and rarely resorts to simply jump scares.

Eric Kohn from Indie Wire :

Jeff Goldbum has only a few minutes of screen time in “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” and boy, he looks tired. As self-described chaotician Ian Malcolm in “Jurassic Park,” he predicted that attempts to resurrect dinosaurs for a theme park would go wrong for everyone involved; 25 years later, a bearded, greying Dr. Malcom is pleading his directly to Congress. But it’s clear that in a franchise defined by diminishing returns, no one will listen to the sole voice of reason. The franchise’s latest entry takes its cues from the knuckleheaded plotting and CGI overload of “Jurassic World,” where super-sized dinos face dumb capitalists and bleeding-heart environmentalists toil to save the day. We all know the drill.

Mike Reyes from Cinemablend :

When reviving a brand like Jurassic Park, it’s important to balance both the familiar and the unexpected. If Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom was too much of a retread of the previous sequels in the franchise, it would be easy to pick on that and call it lazy. In this case, rather than resting on the skeletons of films like The Lost World: Jurassic Park, director J.A. Bayona’s sequel takes the DNA of movies past and splices it with some wicked new tricks. It all adds up to a summer blockbuster and a sequel that delivers on the promise established in previous adventures, plus comes in a slick, scary package.

Chris Nashawaty from Entertainment Weekly :

As the Jurassic series has metastasized and mushroomed, science and Big Ideas have fallen by the wayside in the headlong pursuit of jack-in-the-box entertainment. You could argue that three summers ago absurdity reached its delirious breaking point. Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World was a ridiculous movie, which came with its own can-you-believe-this meme: the image of Bryce Dallas Howard’s heroine sporting a towering pair of high heels while being chased in the jungle by prehistoric predators. to be fair, her less than sensible choice of footwear wasn’t any sillier than anything else in the film, but it caught on as a sort of naysayer’s shorthand. Still, it was possible to have a good time by suspending your disbelief. Well, not just possible, but preferable.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom roars into theatres on June 22, 2018