Movie Review: Primal (2019)

Written by Richard Leder (The Suspect) and directed by Nick Powell (Outcast), Primal is something that was sent our way to review that is definitely more action/thriller, but does have a few horror elements in it here and there.

While the film’s writer and director aren’t as well-known, the actors in this film were definitely recognizable. It stars Nicolas Cage (Face/Off, The Rock, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans) and also features Famke Janssen (X-Men, House on Haunted Hill), Kevin Durand (Robin Hood, Legion, X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and even Michael Imperioli (Sopranos, Goodfellas). The cast was pretty great here. This film could have probably also used some Steven Seagal to round it off.

The film starts off with Cage’s character Frank Walsh in a tree. He sees a white Jaguar appear and manages to capture it after a short scuffle. After getting the Jaguar and the rest of his animals onto a ship, some U.S. military personnel bring a criminal aboard shackled up and will be joining the trip. As you can probably tell, something goes horribly wrong, and the criminal escapes and is roaming the ship. He also lets the jaguar and all of the other animals (snakes etc) loose to roam the ship as well.

So this film has a Con Air mixed with Snakes on a Plane vibe, and it pulls on those nostalgia heartstrings in pretty much every way it can. The 90’s action influence is there. The insanity of the escaped prisoner Richard Loffler played by Durand is very reminiscent of most crazy action villains of that era, and the danger of the poisonous snakes and other animals also play a big part in what makes this film what it is.

Part of the charm, and also at the same time one of the downsides of Primal is the writing. Normally with these types of films, you have to guess whether the bad dialogue is due to the delivery of lines by bad acting performances or the script. In this case, it’s definitely the script. Maybe it was intentional to add to the vibe of the film, but it’s really cheesy. A good kind of cheesy, but still cheesy. There were also moments where the script itself was also just not good in general.

There were some other things to mention that we found impressive was the CGI. The animals didn’t look all that bad for the most part, and they had some pretty good scenes where they were in some nasty situations with the people aboard the ship. It wasn’t phenomenal or anything, but it wasn’t bad enough to be noticeably bad.

To wrap things up here, this film is definitely more action/thriller than horror, but it has its moments. There are a couple of jump scares here and there. There is the Snakes on a Plane vibe with the dangerous animals loose on the ship, and also the murderous criminal doing his thing which made for a fun time. It wasn’t necessarily a great film overall, but not a terrible one either. It’s always nice to see Nicolas Cage in something new, and the rest of the cast was pretty good as well. We would definitely recommend it as something to watch on a cheesy action movie night, but not so much as a horror film.

Primal releases on November 8th from Lionsgate in select theaters and on-demand.