10 Incredible Scenes From Mediocre Movies

You'd be forgiven for assuming that the first Jurassic Park sequel wasn't directed by Steven Spielberg, considering how utterly slack, even pedestrian it feels overall, as though a hack-for-hire was basically trying to imitate the legendary filmmaker's style.

But The Lost World was indeed helmed by Spielberg himself, albeit held at the mercy of a lousy script which, among other things, included a young gymnast dropkicking a raptor. Yup.

Yet there's just a single scene where the director's signature penchant for suspense truly shines through, and that's when Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore) and Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughn) are left fighting for their lives as a dinosaur nudges their research trailer off a cliff.

It's a brilliantly designed sequence primed to wring out every last possible drop of suspense, and reaches peak Spielberg when Harding is left scrambling to escape the cracked trailer window before it shatters entirely.

Unsurprisingly this scene was one of the two that Spielberg chose to translate directly from Michael Crichton's novel - the rest of the movie is a loose adaptation at best - clearly appreciating its white-knuckle cinematic potential on the page.