Zombos Says: Fair
Director Michael Katleman’s Primeval is a film filled with monsters. There’s Gustave, the four-legged, meat-eating kind, and Little Gustave, the two-legged and hungry for power kind. Both do not help make Primeval a good horror movie. The story’s tension and scares are lost in the flip-flops between social commentary, which requires lingering and thoughtful scenes, and horror, which requires the exact opposite.
Based on a real-life crocodile that’s been attacking people along the Rusizi River in Burundi, Africa, you’d think the story would pretty much write itself: the largest man-eating crocodile in history, born out of a genocidal civil-war raging in Burundi. With so many bodies floating around in the river, it’s no wonder Gustave develops a taste for human flesh. Yet, Katleman’s film misses the real horror of this human tragedy.
One reluctant news reporter (Dominic Purcell), and one determined to become more than just a fluff, cute-story animal reporter (Brooke Langton), head to Burundi. Along with them for the ride, there’s the hip, inner-city camera man (Orlando Jones). And, not to miss out on any of the clichés, they meet up with the herpetologist that wants to capture the man-eater alive—so you know what’s going to happen to him, right?—and the savvy African hunter (Jurgen Prochnow), whose vendetta with the crocodile makes him itching to blow it up with a grenade or two. Complicating matters is the genocidal war raging in Burundi, and Little Gustave, the warlord that controls the part of the country our intrepid crocodile hunters must travel through. It’s these two, seemingly complimentary themes of evil and monstrosity, from both Gustaves, that work badly together. When the hunt for Gustave becomes the struggle to run from Gustave and Little Gustave, the interweaving of both is handled with uninspired dialog and predictable events that fail to build or even sustain tension.
Another vexing addition to this film is the annoying soundtrack. The music jars against the action on screen with its loud, rock rhythms. There’s no hint of “primeval” in the modernistic score, leaving me wondering if John Frizzell actually watched the movie before composing it.
The use of a homing dart and a hand-held locater, indicating how close Gustave is with its slow or rapid beeping, is a too convenient plot device, am I’m not sure how realistic it is, either. While it’s used to lead the unwitting warlord to potential doom, after he captures the news reporters with intent to kill them, it removes the uncertainty where the crocodile could be, or when it will attack.
Uncertainty is not a technique used in this film. From the placement of the steel cage to trap Gustave, to the camera man stumbling upon, then filming, the warlord’s men killing a local family, the story is certainly predictable in every frame of its ninety-four minute running time. And when the would-be hunters find themselves in a rickety hut out in the water, with a very fragile looking wooden walkway connecting it to land, and the locater starts beeping, we’re quite certain what will happen next, just as they are. Note to herpetologists here: don’t stand on rickety wooden walkways when hunting man-eating crocodiles during a heavy rainstorm.
Yet, Primeval shows high production values and skillful, viciously gory—if a bit too fast—CGI-rendered chomping that’s well-orchestrated, especially when Gustave crunches down, as to be expected, on one particular fellow’s noggin, splattering it like a grape. The acting is good, even if the roles are shallow, and the cinematography and direction are more than adequate. What doesn’t pass muster here is the too-straightforward story and, even worse, the unimaginative dialog. Both fail to involve us emotionally in either the predatory horrors of the on-going genocide or Gustave’s eating habits, leaving us surprisingly unattached from the events depicted, given their morbid subject matter.
Reinforcing that uninvolvment are relationships that could potentially bristle with sparks, but, instead, merely languish undeveloped. Prochnow’s seasoned hunter, unlike Quint in Jaws, is one-dimensional and shows little of his supposed vendetta against the crocodile, or his frustration with the herpetologist who wants to capture it alive. The two news reporters squabble just a bit, with Purcell too quick to acquiesce. Langton’s character is the worst of the lot; if I never see another oh I’ve got to rescue that mangy dog in danger, even though I may be horribly eaten alive for it moment, it will be too soon.
What also doesn’t work well is her wardrobe. Another of my pet peeves regarding women and what they wear in horror films is how mismatched the two usually are. You would think she’d wear something more conservative and functional than a tight-fitting, midriff-baring top, and bum-tight pants while crocodile hunting. Come on guys, grow up. Real adults watch horror films, too.
Primeval is a disappointing exercise in horror; not terribly disappointing, but what it doesn’t do with the real-life horrors it attempts to fictionalize is more of a surprise than a crushing disappointment.
It looks like a very nice movie.