Film: Primevil
Release date: 21st March 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 86 mins
Director: Roel Reiné
Starring: Hadley Fraser, Terry Notary, Nick Mennell, Emily Foxler, Marc Bacher
Genre: Action/Adventure/Horror/Thriller
Studio: Revolver
Format: DVD
Country: Australia/USA
This is an English-language release.
In 2009, Jorge Ihle was tasked with making The Forgotten Ones, a horror adventure film eventually released in the UK under the title After Dusk They Come. The studio, and the late, great Irwin Kirshner (The Empire Strikes Back) as producer, however, were not happy with his efforts and, in fear of a commercial flop, enlisted Dutch director Roel Reiné to recast, reshoot and entirely remake the film as The Lost Tribe, which is now available on DVD under the title Primevil. Is the quickest remake in cinema history justified or were the studio bosses unnecessarily keen to part with another million dollars (the estimated budget for each of the versions) to flog a dead horse?
A group of attractive, young adults party on-board a luxury yacht in the middle of the ocean, celebrating a potential business partnership that could prove extremely lucrative for all involved.
While diving from the boat, Tom (Nick Mennell) spots a man clinging to a piece of driftwood in obvious distress. Rescuing and taking the man onboard, suspicions are raised as the drowning man’s motives are not altogether wholesome. Escaping from his makeshift cell, he commandeers the navigational controls, sending the yacht crashing into a reef.
Shipwrecked, the group find themselves washed up on a desert island, where they frantically call for help on the yacht’s emergency radio and try to find their bearings.
On their first night on the island, the stranger has vanished, leaving behind a pool of blood and gore. Tom is also missing, so the group set off in search of their friend and the stranger responsible for their harrowing predicament. During their exploration, they come across an abandoned army camp where there are clues leading to the existence of an indigenous tribe who may be the missing evolutionary link between Neanderthals and humans. With this realisation, the group are hunted, separated and picked off by the tribe, who operate mainly from the trees, before Anna (Emily Foxler) is forced to tackle them head on…
As the synopsis undoubtedly reveals, Primevil (or whichever name it has adopted this week) lacks even the slightest shred of originality. It seems that Reiné and the screenwriters have misinterpreted the meaning of homage as ‘to blatantly plagiarise’. The air of unoriginality is most apparent after the initial shipwreck sequence when the frequently used POV shots from the creatures are used to frame the group’s investigation of the island. Their prey is stalked through a grainy heat detecting filter, overcome by the hapless victims by, believe it or not, disguising themselves in the gooey juice from a native plant. The creatures hunt their prey from the treetops, making purring growls and jumping through the canopy in a laughable, scientifically impossible defiance of gravity, which belies the pseudo-scientific babble about the creatures’ evolution.
If all this sounds familiar, it is because the whole second and third act of the film is a complete retelling of John McTiernan’s classic Predator, but with only a disappointing fraction of the tension, action or imaginative creature design. The creatures themselves look ridiculous, with any hint of tension being completely abandoned as soon as their appearance is revealed. Obviously styled as a primal, Neanderthal version of Stan Winston’s timeless creation, complete with dreadlocks and a similarly styled bone mask, the creatures fail to frighten or add any tension to the film. They simply cheapen an already bare bones thriller which is successful only in its ability to bore with its unimaginative action, wooden acting and predictable narrative.
Even a brief supporting role as a church assassin by Lance Henriksen (Aliens) fails to ignite any real sense of excitement, as he has also become a staple in b-movie trash, despite the obvious intention to add a sense of authenticity to the film. His role is underplayed and signifies a totally pointless and underdeveloped subplot, despite an intriguing start as he assassinates an unarmed woman to protect the evolutionary secrets of the island from undermining his employer’s religious beliefs.
The film does, however, feature some pretty decent old school make-up effects, with some grisly scenes (particularly Tom’s ‘missing back’ in his final scene) that adds to a sense that the production team missed a trick with the tame killings and could have utilised their obviously competent make-up department to improve on the poor creature designs and create a film which could at least satisfy the gore hounds in the audience. What remains, unfortunately, is ninety minutes of an underwhelming script, wooden performances and a non-starting plot which could have allowed the film to elevate to the heady heights of so-bad-its-good, Asylum films (Mega Piranha, Transmorphers, etc.) quality trash, but unfortunately takes itself far too seriously, resulting in an uninspiring and tedious experience.
Arguably the most pointless remake ever, Primevil offers nothing exceptional. A bland, unoriginal thriller whose uninspired aping of superior titles leaves the audience in no doubt as to why the studio was panicked that the original would flop. RB
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