Review: Primal (2010)

 

Directed by: Josh Reed

Starring: Zoe Tuckwell-Smitch, Krew Boylan, Lindsay Farris and Wil Traval


This Australian movie “oozes” low budget. From the remote campsite setting, to the six bland friends (3 boys, 3 girls) and the bad acting. But with these tropes in the movie, there can still be the factor that it is enjoyable.

Unfortunately I did not enjoy this movie. It starts off with a prologue of a Caveman making cave drawings. He is attack by some sort of deformed human with long sharp teeth (actually if you played the Mortal Kombat games, its Baraka, the creature looks like an updated Baraka). Some years pass, and we find ourselves in present day Australia, or at least somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Six happy friends led by anthropology student and Alpha Male named, Dace, the group sets out in to the wilderness to look for some cave drawings. Once they are in the cave, one of them, Anja, cuts her arm and her blood drips into the moist surface of the cave. After that we see some parts of the nature react, something bad is rising…

The group sets up camp and because this is a low budget horror movie, there needs to be skinny-dipping. Once the blond girl of the group, Mel, goes into the water, she wants to lure her boyfriend Chad in, but he’s afraid of water or something, it doesn’t get quite clear why doesn’t want to go in. But luckily for him, after Mel comes out she’s covered with leeches. After Alpha Male Dace used salt to get them off, Mel goes to sleep, just to wake up in the middle of the night with a fever. The group wants to take her to the hospital, but the car tires are being eaten by… killer ants. So they plan to go on foot, but sweet Mel finally turns in to a female Baraka and start to attack everyone.


From that point on the movie goes around in circles. The same thing happens over and over again. The group guards the camp, Mel kills one of them, they fight her off, and repeat. A movie like this can be a lot of fun if the humour was funny, which is not, even the unintentionally bad acting doesn’t make up for it. The gory effects are ok, but not much present. The only recommendation I can give this movie is if you want to see a Kangaroo get attack by a turned human, than you’re in luck, this movie has that. Not to give the ending away, but it had some really bad effects, and made everything more unclear.

But in the end, all the clichés, bad acting, the repetitive nature of it all, it saddens me to say that it doesn’t make for a good horror movie. Although I hope that the director keeps making movies, hopefully the next time will be better.


+ It has a killer rabbit
+ Decomposing Kangaroo

-Bad Acting
-Repetitive story
-Not enough gore


Overall score:

1 out of 5