Plot
Anja and five friends join anthropology student Dace on a journey to study a remote ancient rock painting...
Release Year: 2010
Rating: 4.9/10 (2,100 voted)
Director:
Josh Reed
Stars: Krew Boylan, Ch'aska Cuba de Reed, Santiago Cuba de Reed
Storyline Anja and five friends join anthropology student Dace on a journey to study a remote ancient rock painting. Their excitement vanishes when Mel becomes delirious after skinny-dipping in the waterhole. Feverish bleeding confused she physically and mentally regresses to a vicious predatory state. Mel has gone primal. Mels lover and friends realize they are the prey as she savagely hunts them down. Before they can escape another one of them starts to regress posing a hideous choice kill their friends or be killed by them. Their only hope of survival is through a cave where Anja learns too late the meaning of the ancient rock art they came to study.
Writers: Nigel Christensen, Josh Reed
Cast: Krew Boylan
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Mel
Ch'aska Cuba de Reed
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Squatter's daughter
Santiago Cuba de Reed
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Squatter's son
Lindsay Farris
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Chad
Rebekah Foord
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Kris
Damien Freeleagus
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Warren
Stephen Shanahan
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Squatter
Wil Traval
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Dace
Zoe Tuckwell-Smith
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Anja
Filming Locations: Fox Studios, Moore Park, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Did You Know?
Trivia: Lux Interior, of The Cramps, died a month before Primal started shooting. Director Josh Reed and costume designer Emily Schulz made a "RIP LUX" tee shirt which Warren wears throughout the film in his honor.
Goofs:
Boom mic visible:
When Chad and Anja are talking at the campfire, a mic appears at the top edge of the picture.
User Review
A Nutshell Review: Primal
Rating: 6/10
Written, directed and produced by Josh Reed, Primal may seem like your
typical violent monster / slasher flick, but in following formula the
film did turn out to be rather enjoyable, if not cliché, but it worked.
The opening scene some 12000 years ago gives us the premise where a
caveman tries to communicate the presence of an unknown beast, only to
be devoured very quickly before fast forwarding to today, with 6
travelling friends on a road trip to that exact same location for a
camp and a hike.
The film takes the first 30 minutes to cue us in on the characters,
given that with an ensemble, we expect certain molds to be adopted. For
instance, there's always the ditzy, loud mouthed and slutty blonde
(Krew Boylan) who's in the trip for some forest romp with studious
looking boyfriend Chad (Lindsay Farris), who had enough when she starts
to openly flirt with the alpha male of the group, Dace (Wil Traval),
who's take away from the trip is the mysterious painting seen in the
opening shot. Throw in the others like the group joker Warren (Damien
Freeleagus), simple follower Kris (Rebekah Foord) and the one whom you
know is more than meets the eye given the token phobia she must
overcome at some point (Anja, played by Zoe Tuckwell-Smith), you have
the requisite group for one heck of a monster attack.
I would liken the genre as an opportunity to study character dynamics
and behaviours when placed under extremely stressful situations, such
as the tendency for some to talk a lot without action, or to arrow
others to perform various dirty-work What more, it gets interesting
because the great unknown happens to be manifested into one of their
own, so existential questions get called into the picture, especially
when one gets transformed into a blood lusting beast with plenty of
fang-like teeth replacing the human ones, extreme dexterity (an ability
that varies its effectiveness from time to time) and a nasty violent
temper, coupled with some nasty makeup to complete the revolting look
set to strike fear.
There's the decision to play who lives and who dies, and as the
audience you get roped in, based on past experience in similar genre
films, to play guess who's next, as we listen in on all the bickering
and disagreements, plus the warning signs that the characters
themselves fail to heed. Of course these disagreements get chopped down
to manageable size when the body count increases, and part of the
guilty fun is to identify and apply genre clichés over the film and see
if they still hold water. Most do.
For those into bloody gore, there are enough moments in Primal that are
graphic enough to make you squirm, since the acts of violence are
unflinching. The story gets built up quite nicely into the last hurrah,
where unfortunately some really raw looking special effects set in a
cave drew unnecessary attention to itself, and marred the experience of
the crescendo carefully crafted.
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