J.A.
Bayona

Being assigned to direct “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” marked major Hollywood recognition for one of Europe’s foremost young directors, thanks to three films: two fantasies, the other a disaster movie. They add psychological substance to genre set-ups, marking a powerful trilogy that turns on mother-son relationships and loss.

It is no coincidence, perhaps, that Bayona’s 2007 feature debut, the Spanish-language “The Orphanage,” produced by Barcelona’s Rodar y Rodar, was grandfathered by Guillermo del Toro. As in del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth,” Bayona’s movies ground shocks, effects and fantasy in the psychology of baseline human relationships: a mother’s battle to assume maternity and her small son’s disappearance in “The Orphanage”; another mother’s struggle to reunite her family after a tsunami in 2012’s true-event-inspired “The Impossible,” which won Naomi Watts an Oscar nomination; in 2016’s “A Monster Calls,” a son’s attempt to articulate his emotions at his mother’s dying from cancer.

Make it real, and the fans will come flocking. Though 2016’s “A Monster Calls” failed to catch a box office fire outside Bayona’s native Spain, few burgeoning film careers have borne this out like Bayona’s, whose movies, though all produced outside Spain, have grossed $302 million to date worldwide. His “Jurassic World” gig now takes the career of Bayona, an alum of Barcelona’s Escac film school, to a whole different level.