Primeval DVD Review

Before hastily casting Primeval aside as another large animal attacking film, as I once did, take a moment to let the fact that the crocodile in many ways becomes a sub-plot through most of the film. Although the beast certainly is the reason for the film, a far more complex story dealing with the politics in the area where the real life man-eating crocodile resided is far more prominent in the storyline. This makes for a surprising mix of bad CG crocodile killings and the ghost of a much smarter film within the backbone of the structure.

Armed with a television crew and far too few experts on the infamous crocodile a crew of American journalists set out to do a story on the beast as well as attempting to capture it as an end to a perfect story. Unfortunately the crocodile is far more intelligent than any experts are used to, as well as being a great deal larger as well. This plot seems to be just a bit more like Anaconda than audiences were willing to pay to see, but being based on a true menace in Africa manages to bring some texture to the story. As much as Gustave, the giant crocodile is feared, so is Little Gustave, an equally feared rebel leader in the bush who is also a known killer. Caught between political turmoil caused by twelve years of civil war and a giant man-eating beast who seemingly hunts for sport, the mission turns bad quickly and just keeps getting worse until the most our heroes can hope for is survival.

Although there are many qualities in Primeval which would make it easily comparable to other killer animal films such as Anaconda, there is also much more to this particular film. With an attractive cast on an expedition to kill a giant crocodile it seems that Primeval was set up perfectly to be good campy fun. There are still even a variety of one-liners, mostly coming from Orlando Jones as the token black camera man who is excited to be in Africa until everyone starts dying. Even with the unbelievably attractive cast and a sense of humor Primeval manages to be much more of a film than one might expect. The crocodile action is the least exciting part of the film, perhaps to due to the heavy reliance of digital imagery to bring the beast to life, but there are many suspenseful scenes of danger which deal more with realistic scenes of terror and violence. These well-shot sequences increase the respectability of a film which could easily have become another Lake Placid.

The special features include a featurette, “Croc-umentary: Bringing Gustave to Life” but rather than focusing on the truth behind the real crocodile, which would have been much more interesting, it is just a rehashing of the technical abilities used to create the digital monster. This might be impressive if it weren’t the least believable aspect of the film.