Primeval is a movie that doesn’t quite know what it’s supposed to be. On one hand it’s a killer crocodile movie. On the other hand it’s a political thriller. It probably isn’t as good at being either as it should be.
The dual nature of the movie is established in the first scene, where an American forensic archaeologist is investigating a mass grave related to Burundi’s civil war. In the middle of getting her Scully on, she’s grabbed by an unseen animal and dragged into the nearby river, and CSI-sized chunks float to the surface.
Back in America the story of a killer crocodile is assigned to Tim (Dominic Purcell), a muckraking TV reporter who needs get out of the country before his most recent political story blows up because it relied on evidence that he later discovered to be fake. The network has come up with the idea that it would be good for sweeps to catch the croc alive, so they send Avivia Masters (Brooke Langdon), who Tim derisively calls an “animal reporter,” and cameraman Steven Johnson (Orlando Jones). Once they arrive in Burundi they join up with Steve Irwin analog Matt Collins (Gideon Emery) and crusty-but-benign river guide Jacob. I suppose that for completeness sake I should mention that Jacob is played by Jurgen Prochnow, but if you’re anything like me you would have been more surprised if there was a giant crocodile movie Jurgen Prochnow wasn’t in.
Before setting off down the river our heroes run into the requisite Warning Native, who tells them that the giant croc called Gustave has killed hundreds.
Steven: Hundreds? Yeah, right.
Avivia: That would make the news.
Tim: Why would it? Thousands have died here. That doesn’t make the news.
Touché, Primeval. Touché.
That’s a pretty good example of the kind of political commentary the movie engages in between Gustave attacks. Or maybe the Gustave attacks are between the political commentary. It’s tough to tell which is primary. The actual crocodile action is disappointingly perfunctory. They try to catch Gustave in a cage but he doesn’t take the bait. (”He’s too smart,” intones Jacob.) They hit Gustave with a tracker, and there are allegedly tense scenes of characters squinting into a display and yelling about how far away Gustave is. There’s a scene where all the characters discuss life, the universe and everything while trapped on the remains of a house floating on Gustave’s lake.
Just about the only really noteworthy monster scene is also the most ridiculous. After things go balls up, Steven ends up alone in the shallows of the river. Gustave attacks him, and Steven reasonably enough makes for land. Gustave gets hung up in a tree trunk by the river edge, and Steven runs farther inland. But then Gustave gets free, and sprints after Steven in the open veldt. It is interesting to see how the CGI artists try to sell a low-to-the-ground ambush predator like a crocodile running through grassland, even if they are doomed to failure.
The bad guy of the political part of the movie is “Little Gustave,” a warlord that few people have ever seen. Steven accidentally films some ethnic cleansing Little Gustave ordered, and so there are a couple of bloody chases as the warlord’s thugs try to get the tape back. It’s nothing you haven’t seen in a dozen better movies.
I don’t mean to sound down on the idea of crossing a political thriller with a monster movie. It’s been done, and well. Any of George Romero’s Living Dead movies, or The Host (2006). Hell, it’s even been done with crocodylia, in Alligator (1980). But Primeval isn’t as artfully written as an of those films, and the two plots take time and creativity away from each other, rather than complimenting each other like they should.
