Primal Review

November 4, 2019 at 3:54am
By Jason Stettner

This is an interesting and sort of straight forward movie. It’s about a big game hunter that works for zoos after having worked at one in the past. This is Frank Walsh (Nicolas Cage), a man that’s not easy to get along with. This guy is after some prize animals, and is ruthless in protecting what he’s caught.

The narrative really kicks off during his shipping freighter ride to drop off the latest bundle of animals. This might seem like a big element of the experience, but he’s also joined by a political assassin that’s being extradited to the United States in secret. There’s lot of tension in this situation, and that eventually bursts.

A new issue begins to form where there are not only deadly animals from the Amazon roaming the ship, but also a deadly hunter in their own right. Again, fairly straight forward yet it does carry a lot of action and it might have some surprises along the way. There’s a fairly large cast of characters involved, and there’s a decent bit of story that goes on in this one.

There’s a good use of space here, since this does take place on a ship. The CGI was usually just a miss, with some of it being rather rough. That was used almost exclusively with the animals. There was a lot of action as I mentioned, and some gruesome scenes as well.

I’m trying to lightly touch upon elements as not to spoil things, and I was surprised in the direction they took with this. It was a high adrenaline filled ride, with a more intimate setting to it. Things could go either way, and the combative scenes were well handled. There’s a sense of mystery as to what’s going on, and that does add some extra context to the situation. It’s a neat concept for a film, and it’s not at all a bad time.

The Conclusion

Primal is an alright action film that pits one man against a series of dangerous animals, with one of them being an apex predator that greatly challenges the grizzled lead. Nicolas Cage was solid in this, being a man that was somewhat bad, and most definitely someone that wasn’t too friendly.

They use the boat areas well, and it does have some interesting moments throughout. It’s also not necessarily anything too wild, very straight forward. It was better than I had anticipated it to be, and it did get more interesting as things kicked off. I didn’t expect certain situations, and the action was better than I would have guessed it would be.

It had some gruesome moments as well, and those also came across as surprising. It’s a decent watch if you like the concept, just don’t expect anything too wildly surprising. Not to say you won’t be surprised, it’s just that this is a straight forward type of action flick. Oh, and that CGI could have been far better, it was honestly just atrocious at times.

Primal Review at Home with Streamed Viewing
Screening Provided by Katrina Wan PR

Rating Overall: 5.4