Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park begins with a spectacular idea: a park displaying dinosaurs recreated through genetic engineering. Then the system meant to contain them collapses. That is enough of the set-up for me. The thought of walking into a place designed to make all this feel safe is unsettling before anything goes wrong. I would be reading every warning sign twice, including the ones about the toilets.

The fear works on two levels. Dinosaurs are frightening enough when you think about sharing space with them. The quieter worry is the confidence behind the park: the belief that people can make something extraordinary and account for everything it might do. Chaos theory gives that worry a name. It makes the park's collapse feel like more than a single bad decision, without requiring you to arrive with a maths textbook.

This is one for a night when you want your reading to feel tense and your own front door to feel reassuringly ordinary. If you like creature stories with a question underneath the danger, there is plenty to think about here. How much control would you need before you agreed to visit? I would require an answer considerably better than “we've thought of everything”.