It’s with great admiration and a tip of the hat to its
marketers that I note Primeval
arrived in theaters earlier this year without me actually knowing it was in
fact about a killer crocodile.
Its distributor, Touchstone, you see, sold the movie as a sort of serial killer
safari tale set in a faraway land — all quick cuts, splashed water and ominous
narration. It was a ploy that probably worked out OK, all things considered.
Opening in just over 2,400 theaters the second weekend in January, the movie rang
up $6 million on its way to $10.5 million overall; not at all a big hit, certainly,
but brutal honesty likely wouldn’t have netted Primeval any more lucre. Now with the proper word out, however, the
movie will find its more natural niche audience on DVD… which is to say adolescent-skewing
fans of creature-feature schlock.
of disgraced TV reporter Tim Manfrey, played by Dominic Purcell (Prison Break),
who treks to the Dark Continent with hopes of launching a career comeback on
the strength of a story about a 20-foot beast, nicknamed Gustave, with more
than 300 human kills on his resume. It seems a nice investigation on a corrupt
Congressman or pedophilic priest wouldn’t really do the trick, I guess.
The film’s croc is CGI, but Purcell gets up close and personal with an
intriguingly blended human cast, including Orlando Jones (above) as his wiseacre
cameraman Steven Johnson and Brooke Langton as Aviva Masters, a local tour guide and fellow newsie. (Jurgen Prochnow also
costars, for those looking for a connection between this movie and Das Boot.) Unfortunately the characters
are pretty thinly sketched, and director Michael Katleman, a television helmer
making his feature film debut, doesn’t have the means to pull off huge set pieces.
The digital rendering of his “villain” isn’t the best, so he tries to go the cloaked-in-shadow
route, which becomes an exercise in both obviousness and tedium. The aforementioned leading players wring some interesting moments out of their interplay (Jones is always fun to watch), but otherwise Gustave has
only really three big moments in the sun — including one quite literally. The rest of co-writers
John Brancato and Michael Ferris’ material, though, including a local warlord angle, seems
nakedly like what it chiefly is, namely arbitrary padding.
with raised effect, Primeval’s DVD release
is packed with some nice bonus features, many of which include puns! Leading
that hit parade is a 10-minute making-of piece, Croc-umentary: Bringing Gustave to Life, which delves into
the computer rendering of its slithery killer. There are also three deleted scenes with
overlaid commentary by Katleman, and a feature-length audio commentary track with
Katleman and visual effects supervisor Paul Linden. Presented in 2.35:1
anamorphic widescreen that preserves the aspect ration of its original
theatrical exhibition, the movie comes with a solidly mixed Dolby digital 5.1 surround
sound audio track — full of naturalistic ambient noise — and optional Spanish, French
and English subtitles. D (Movie) B- (Disc)