This image released by Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment shows Scarlett Johansson in a scene from " Jurassic World: Rebirth." Jasin Boland/Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment via AP

I saw the first “Jurassic Park” (1993) on opening day at the Kukui Mall Theater in Kihei with my mother, who was not ready for the experience. We sat in the front row and the film’s many jump scares caused my mother to squeeze my arm so much, I left the theater bruised.

A year later, I met Roger Ebert, the only movie critic to win the Pulitzer Prize, at the Waldenbooks in the Queen Ka’ahumanu Center. Ebert was in town promoting “Roger Ebert’s Little Movie Glossary,” which included the “Bruised Forearm Movie,” which he defined as any movie so scary, your date squeezes your arm black and blue. I informed Mr. Ebert that he was right about this, and that “Jurassic Park” was the reason this happened to me.

Thirty-two years later, we’re now on the seventh “Jurassic Park” sequel, and the formula has mostly remained the same: Science has allowed us to keep bringing dinosaurs back. Humans gaze at them with awe until the towering wonders get hungry and bite our heads off.

The new installment opens in a neo-Jurassic world where the dinosaurs are, once again, dying off but only after the public has gotten sick of them returning. A striking opening shows a massive creature creating a traffic jam in New York. This is where we meet a new batch of scientists who plot an expedition to an island of mutated InGen-created dinos. The reason: to extract blood from three dinos, who live in the ocean, land and sky, in the name of valuable scientific research.

Leading the team is Zora, played by Scarlett Johansson, who leads an engaging ensemble of actors that includes the overqualified Oscar winner Mahershala Ali and the popular “Bridgerton” scene stealer Jonathan Bailey.

Also included are a second group of characters, a family on a different boat who have very different reasons to be in dino-infested waters. It feels like a different screenplay was merged with this one.

“Jurassic World: Rebirth” gets better after an uneven start, in which there’s far too much pre-adventure chatter and exposition for characters we don’t initially know or care about. While series creator Michael Crichton could make this work in his novels (such as “Sphere” and “Timeline”), it weighs this latest entry down. Only once the story takes to the water (stealing heavily from “Jaws”) and settles on the island does it finally hit the ground running.

One highlight is a moment where a giant eye underwater looks up at Zora while she struggles to stay on board the ship. Another is the reveal of a T-Rex, utterly terrifying, yet sleeping like a puppy on a riverbank. All the monsters here are vivid.

It helps that the director is Gareth Edwards, who incorporates story elements of his terrific film debut “Monsters” (2010) and his exceptional “Godzilla” (2014) into this one. I always believed in the threat, even as the humans are typically doing and saying the dumbest things imaginable. That said, I love the franchise staple of the human characters doing a slow turn to see the threat they hear behind them (likewise, the slack jawed stare set to John Williams’ still enthralling theme music).

It’s a pleasure to see someone as good as Johansson in the lead. Yet, her character is suffering from PTSD, and the moments where the actress dips into Zora’s darkness are countered with smirky movie star vibrance. It’s as though Johansson intended to play Sarah Conner, but the filmmakers wanted her to be Lara Croft.

Gareth’s film is smart enough to feel, in tone and pacing, more like a Crichton thriller than the prior “Jurassic World” trilogy. Yet it’s dopey enough to include a hilariously ghoulish prologue where a Snickers wrapper is weaponized in a “Final Destination” manner (remember kids, give a hoot, don’t pollute).

I liked this latest episode as much as the prior three and, despite how spectacular and gripping it gets, I managed to emerge from the theater minus a bruised forearm.

On the other hand, I brought my 9-year-old daughter, who was enthralled by the prior three movies and handled the intensity of the latest sequel. At one point, a loathsome character was eaten off camera and I laughed out loud. My daughter asked me, disgusted, “Why did you laugh at that?!” No bruised forearm, but I got called out for having a warped sense of humor.

(Three stars out of four)

Barry Wurst II is the founder of the Hawaii Film Critics Society and teaches film classes at University of Hawai’i Maui College.