Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom as a 21st-Century Gothic Tale

Abstract

This paper considers Juan Antonio Bayona’s 2018 film Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom as a Gothic film which disrupts the archetypal conventions of monster films, especially in relation to the antispeciesist conception of monsters —in this case, the genetically-engineered dinosaurs which feature in the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World sagas. Through an analysis of its cinematography, character construction, scenarios and plot development in the light of Gothic Studies, I will argue that this film is not just Gothic in appearance, but also in the sense that it breaks with contemporary anthropocentric conventions of normalcy, unity and species boundaries, and that it confirms the trend in filmic narratives that takes into account the monsters’ perspectives in order to challenge human exceptionalism.

Keywords

• Jurassic World
• Jurassic Park
• Gothic film
• monster film
• antispeciesism