[LOW, RUMBLING VOCALIZATION]
This is terrifying.
This isn't from a Halloween movie.
It isn't from a guy in a mask in a slasher film.
This is 1993's Jurassic Park.
It's no secret that what Jurassic Park did
was bring to life the visualization of dinosaurs
through groundbreaking technology and CGI.
But what it also brought to life is true terror.
While the entire franchise is built
to be a survival thriller, what it brought
was the fusion of another genre with it.
This is something that Patrick Willems has expertly
touched on as well.
Similar to 1979's Alien, which morphed together
both sci-fi and horror in a way you wouldn't be corrected
considering it one or the other, Jurassic Park
brought to life the thrilling excitement of action,
and surprised audiences with a real sense of horror.
Unsurprising that both succeeded in essentially the same era
of film.
Throughout the entire film, we see not only
sequences that would scare most young audience members,
but are also strung along through sequences
that we typically see in slasher films,
through action set pieces.
See, Jurassic Park is a thinly-veiled horror movie, one
that has no clear-cut villain.
Not sure who to blame here, the dinosaurs themselves
for wreaking havoc, the scientists who
brought dinosaurs to life, the dinosaur fanatic
who funded everything for no expense,
or the park's technicians who sabotaged the entire park
system to make some quick cash selling dino DNA.
Short answer is, all of the above.
There's no clear-cut Freddy or Jason.
But this allows the film to be a lot less predictable
than those aforementioned movies when
it comes to pointing the finger and establishing
who and what to fear.
Everything and everyone just mentioned
plays an ambiguous right-and-wrong
moral and ethical role in the process of creation
in solving of the narrative problems.
And then it's you, the viewer who has to lay the blame
and decide who the real bad guy is for the two-hour runtime.
But you do know what scares you.
Real horror comes in how the film stages and connects
each individual scene with that perfect balance
of life-impending terror and seemingly peaceful moments
shrouded in a cloak of danger.
So let's discuss what some of those scenes look like
and break down how they play out.
We'll start with the most famous scene
from the franchise, the first appearance of the T. rex.
While most of the main cast is out on the tour
throughout the park within the self-driving vehicles,
the computer systems malfunctions and park security
systems go off-line.
Characters are split between two of the cars,
with the two kids and the lawyer in the front car,
and Dr. Alan Grant and Dr. Malcolm in the car following.
The weather is getting increasingly worse
on the island as a tropical cyclone
strikes during their visit.
Cars sit waiting in the pouring rain.
Only ambiance that you will hear at this point--
no tension rising music, no buildup-- just
the sound of thunder and rain.
A sound you recognize, with no dressing.
The scene sets itself visually, with a goat inside
of the fence, left as food for something big.
As the kids mess around in the front car,
annoying an uptight lawyer, we hear our first unfamiliar sound
that echoes from a distance.
Tim then explains that he's a little confused about what he's
hearing, which allows the audience a moment to take in
that the noise we just heard, the one causing the ground
to shake, is unfamiliar to them as well.
As we start hearing it a little bit more, a little bit louder,
Tim notices that a cup of water is rippling
when the sound is made, the most famous shot in almost
any film from this decade.
Background rain is slowly fading out
as we focus on just the sound from said distance.
As the thunderous sound ramps up,
the lawyer takes notice of it again.
Tim looks through the night vision
goggles and notices the goat is no longer
on the chain it was on before.
And right as Lex asks where the goat
is, one of its legs lands on the sunroof of their vehicle.
We cut to a dinosaur arm slowly pulling away
from the fence with a "Danger 10,000 Volts" warning sign,
clearly showing us the power is out.
It doesn't just tell us that.
It shows us who's in real danger here.
Then, from the view of the car, we
see the large head of the T. rex slowly rise from the foliage
as she eats the remainder of the goat in one bite,
before turning directly towards the car outside of the fence.
Lawyer then runs out of the car in a panic,
abandoning the kids, heads for the bathroom right
alongside the tour tracks.
I guess, when you got to go, you got to go.
The next sound we hear, on top of that rain,
is the creaking of the fence.
The kids look around to see why.
And in full view, we see the massive T.
rex has bitten through it and proceeds
to walk out onto the track, proclaiming
her dominance with a loud roar.
All this tension, built up with nothing but minuscule sounds,
slow plodding visual cues, and the feeling
of knowing that something is going to happen,
but having no idea when, how, or why.
All of those elements are exactly what
makes up the most tension-filled scenes
of slasher films, of a Halloween movie,
of A Nightmare on Elm Street movie.
It's silence, sound, slow realization, and terror,
in that order.
Almost the antithesis of what you'd normally
get from an action-filled blockbuster.
Continuing the scene, Dr. Alan Grant
states that the T. rex's vision is based on movement,
and to stay absolutely still.
Then cuts back to the kids by themselves in the front car,
frantically moving around and turning on a flashlight.
The dinosaur focuses attention on them
and begins to investigate what the light is.
Tim notices the front driver's-side door is still
open from the lawyer, and quickly slams it closed.
This causes the T. rex to instantly glare into the car
and eventually get the lights of the flashlight directly shined
into its eyes.
T. rex roars, the kids move once again,
and the T. rex violently begins attacking the car,
breaking the sunroof glass, as a piece of it
becomes the only barrier between a T. rex and the kids.
The car is then flipped over and stomped
on as the kids are fighting for their lives.
And the car begins to sink into the ground
as the rain has turned most of the dirt into mud.
And we have our climax.
See, good horror does what we just saw here.
It quietly, not bombastically, builds tension.
It shows the threat.
It shows the power of the threat.
And then it lets you sit in it.
It lets you fear it, before finally exploding.
That is Horror 101, not Action Movie 101.
Finally, Grant and Malcolm both take
turns distracting the T. rex with flares
while chasing Malcolm.
There's a crash into the bathroom.
That breaks apart completely, revealing the lawyer.
And to show that, yes, there are real consequences here
to the horror that's being built up,
and not everyone will make it out alive,
that the danger is serious, to amplify that fear
and provide a period at the end of the sentence,
the T. rex eats the lawyer.
Not off screen, not hidden by a camera angle,
just straight up eats him.
And from there, well, chaos breaks out.
The horror leads to carnage, like all good horror does.
But more importantly, like all good action movies do.
This is where the barrier between horror and action
is broken down and we get this mesh that feels like survival,
which is an action movie trope.
As the T. rex spins the car around and attempts
to eat children, we have the excitement
of watching a dinosaur go to work, while also fearing
for the lives of young people because someone was just
eaten in a very slasher movie kind of way.
Again, look at the most recent Halloween movies.
That eating of the man in the bathroom
is meant to provide some semblance of comedic relief
to this moment, which is a very modern horror
and slasher thing to do.
Another scene that is similar, and maybe a little bit less
impactful, but still important nonetheless,
is the raptor scene.
Raptors throughout the series of Jurassic Park
have time and time again proven they may be a bigger
threat than even the T. rex.
Here we see Dr. Ellie Sattler heading towards the power
station to reboot the power.
She's accompanied by this guy right here, a skilled hunter,
to watch her back on her trek over there.
At the start of this journey, they notice that velociraptors
have broken free of their cage, and, moments
before reaching the power station,
they spot that something is stalking them.
Their gaze fixated on what appears to be a raptor,
tracking their movements.
He instructs Ellie to run quickly to the power station
as he takes on the raptor threat, classic action movie
trope of distract and accomplish.
Once in the power station, she turns on the said power,
catching the attention of a raptor,
then bursts through the pipes behind her, trying to,
well, do what the T. rex did.
On her escape, after trapping it behind a chain link door,
she breathes a sigh of relief.
She's then greeted with a hand on her shoulder, which
we know is Ray Arnold's, which we then instantly find is
no longer attached to his body.
This time we got the reverse--
action, pause, horror.
Cutting back here in this tense standoff,
before he can pull the trigger another raptor
peeks its head out from the bushes.
He utters, "clever girl," as it proceeds
to jump out at him from those bushes, and kills him.
Raptors hunt in packs.
Here, we do get our suspenseful music,
the ambience all underscoring the effectiveness of just how
fast the raptors are, how they hunt, work in numbers, as
opposed to the larger, slower T. rex, who hunts at its leisure.
This is a moment of Jurassic Park understanding horror
within the constructs of action.
The raptor and the T. rex are two different kinds of enemies
and they're treated differently.
Whereas the T. rex is a slow build of terror and tension,
the raptors are fast, heart-pounding, pause,
jump-scare.
Once again, another scene constructed
like a slasher film.
The last scene we'll discuss here
is what I feel sums up the horror
elements of Jurassic Park, maybe better than any other scene.
The final raptor scene that follows the previous one,
where we see the kids and in finally
seems to be a safe environment within the park's
main accommodations area.
While eating desserts, Lex is struck silent while
shaking uncontrollably noticing a silhouette, which
happens to be a dinosaur approaching
on the other side of the wall behind Tim.
Walking past the actual drawing of a velociraptor
on the wallpaper, symbolizing the threat
that they are about to face, they think on their feet.
They run into the kitchen and hide
behind one of the counters.
We see through the circular window on the door
the snout of a raptor, breathing.
We are then told by Ellie that there are only two raptors out
there left, as one is contained unless it can open doors.
Now here we find another horror trope.
We take our horror villain and we
establish what they're supposed to not be able to do,
or what their kryptonite is.
Sometime towards the end of the movie,
horror is created by breaking that facade.
We cut back to the kitchen, where
we see the handle of the door slowly turning and eventually
opening, establishing that the element of safety
has been torn down.
Now we know that the threat is three raptors instead.
The first raptor in begins calling out
to the other raptors to follow suit,
and we get the classic raptor scene in the kitchen.
Scene plays out as Grant, Ellie, and the kids
try rebooting up the computer system of the park
while holding off the raptors from getting inside the control
room, ending in a nail-biting, near-death action
escape through the ceiling while raptors knock down
the door and Lex, leaving her hanging as the raptor
is jumping at her feet.
This all leads to the final showdown
with them being cornered by the pack of raptors,
only to be saved by their first dangerous encounter, the T.
rex, a dinosaur-on-dinosaur battle,
ending horror with action.
Tension in Jurassic Park isn't built
from the typical way you'd see action films structured.
Its foundation is horror first, almost through and through,
and the action almost always becomes secondary.
Horror comedies weren't necessarily
hyper-popular during this era of film,
but Jurassic Park could be considered
one of the first of that ilk.
And by that, I mean first to break
through into the mainstream of film culture,
not necessarily first ever.
Sure, it helps that, at the time,
Jurassic Park's CGI work found a way to create creatures that
simply don't exist-- that we'd never run into--
in a groundbreaking at the time, seemingly realistic way.
But as all good horror is, Jurassic Park is another movie,
like Spielberg has said a thousand times,
that was built in the editing room.
Spielberg, in this scene, painstakingly
put to film a master class on how
to build a movie that both lives and breathes
within multiple genres.
It successfully immerses the viewer within a setting
that you could never be in, and still
grounds it in enough character moments
to feel truly terrified by what's on screen.
A lot of horror is either based on the unknown or on what we do
know becoming something we don't.
Jurassic Park is kind of both of those things, in both concept
and in genre.
So what does that mean?
Well, it essentially means that the rules of genre
are meaningless.
That the rules of paper and brushes is meaningless.
It means, create what you want to create, regardless
of the confines that art itself wants to put you within.
Because most of the time those confines
don't come from what you create, they
come from the people looking at them.
And art should be for you, just like Jurassic Park
was almost certainly for one guy named Steven Spielberg.
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