Is Jurassic Park actually sci-fi horror?

It’s hard to believe that Jurassic Park was released over thirty years ago! The movie stands high above its predecessors in both story and visual effects. It’s quite a landmark film that sent shockwaves through the film industry.

Yet, what actually IS Jurassic Park?

Some may say it’s an action adventure story about getting trapped in a dinosaur theme park. Others may point to it as a thriller as the small band of characters are picked off one by one. For me, the answer is clear. Jurassic Park is a science fiction horror story.

The movies

Okay, there have been lots of Jurassic Park movies so I need to set some boundaries. I’m referring to the original Jurassic Park movie released in 1993 and not any of the subsequent movies. While the Jurassic World movies very timidly dips its toes into science-fiction, those movies are primary action adventure movies.

Honestly, I enjoy almost all of the Jurassic Park/World films with my least favorite of the batch being Jurassic Park 3, released in 2001. Thankfully, that movie inspired a brilliant Honest Trailers review. Do yourself a favor and watch it.

Also note, I’m just talking about Jurassic Park film as opposed to the much superior book of the same name. That book is both brilliant and foretelling. It was written by Michael Crichton and you should put it to the top of your “must read” list.

The funny thing to note is that Michael Crichton passed away in 2008, and yet his estate is still releasing “unpublished” books found on his computer. This reminds me of the Tom Clancy situation whereby Clancy has “released” more books after his own death.

The argument

First off, it’s very easy to think of science fiction as taking place on spaceships and everything is all future. As long as it happens in “the future”, it’s sci-fi, right?

This is wrong. Most popular science-fiction is really just fantasy because there is no basis in science. In Star Wars, lightsabers work by some magic crystal and ships make noise in space. This is fine and entertaining, but it is not science-fiction. Firefly is a re-telling of the post Civil War based on the incredible book, The Killer Angels. Ships are magic transport devices. Again, very entertaining but not sci-fi.

Science fiction takes facts grounded science or even imagined science, and builds a narrative around those facts. Rendezvous with Rama is excellent example of this. In it, scientists visit an alien ship, but the ship itself is rooted in scientific phenomenon. It obeys gravity, inertia, and even thermal dynamics. Part of the suspense is how the ship “reacts” as passes by the sun on its way through the solar system.

Jurassic Park is science fiction. The central premise is growing dinosaurs from fragments of DNA captured from mosquitos millions of years ago. The film goes into great lengths of the process. While the techniques presented in the movie are actually impossible (DNA can barely last a thousand years; never mind sixty seven million years), the movie was based on science at the time.

The movie also goes into great length – not about the dangers of reconstituted dinosaurs – but the dangers of rich people looking to capitalize on the technology without understanding fully it. Sound familiar?

As for the horror, the movie starts by explaining the process of being eaten alive by dinosaur. Then for next two hours, you get to see various people actually eaten alive. While much of the action is off-screen, the impact is still raw and visceral.

The movie (and the book) also invert places of safety into places of horror. At the start of the story, the central guest lodge of the park is a place of comfort and control. By the end of the movie, the lodge is a place of death. The movie does a wonderful job by visually contrasting ordinary places such as a kitchen or a cafeteria into places of high suspense.

Take the dining table. In one scene, Ellie Sattler comforts (and confronts) John Hammond over melting ice cream. In the final act of the movie, Lex and Tim gorge themselves on food at that table, only to discover Velociraptors roaming the halls.

Sound off

At the end of the day, Jurassic Park is an excellent movie that still holds strong. Just do yourself a favor and the read book. While I won’t say it was the best science fiction read of the last century, I will say it stands among them.

How do you feel? Did I get it right? Is Jurassic Park a science fiction horror film? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.