Memo to all screenwriters: giving your script’s unfamiliar characters a set of background sob stories does not make them automatically sympathetic. That constitutes one of the large problems with this movie: you don’t really have much sympathy for the group of mercenaries who form the core of the cast, so whatever is going to happen to them comes across from the start as low-stakes. Things are mildly better with the vacationing family, who at least come across as relatively innocent and thus worthy of the viewer’s consideration. Perhaps the story should have opened with them, and then there would have been a rooting interest from the first scenes. As it is, it’s only well into the action that you start to care about what happens to these people. (Except the sociopathic corporate type, who practically has “dino food” tattooed on his forehead.) The aforementioned “action” is the key element here; the action set pieces are the most effective elements throughout the film, more so than any individual plot point or character or even the creatures themselves. Whereas once upon a time the identifiable species were the real stars, this outing mostly features a bunch of weirdo hybrids that are scary, yeah, but have no real personality or charisma. (The best sequence in the whole flick may be the one that features the good old-fashioned T. rex.) Mix it all together and you wind up with a competent but not all that compelling franchise entry that mostly makes you wonder, “When is this thing going to go extinct?” So long as no one comes up with a better idea, the answer to that question should be "now"— but the real-world answer will be, alas, "not anytime soon" (if there's money to be made).
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