No
relation to the popular TV show, this is the story of five annoying
wankers who find themselves stranded on a mysterious island after
a castaway they have rescued wrecks their yacht. After spending
too long bickering and moaning, they finally discover an abandoned
camp, where a video recording reveals that the island is inhabited
by strange, primitive humanoids – missing links if you like
– and that a religious hit squad is out to prevent news
of this scientific discovery being revealed.
The Church Assassins are led by Lance Henricksen, who gets about
five minutes of screen time before this element of the story is
dispensed with – you suspect the whole purpose of this subplot
is to have an excuse to crowbar a big name into the credits without
having to spend much money. After that, we have to endure the
rest of the cast being picked off one by one in badly filmed,
messy attacks by the ape men, who act like Predator
(leaping, unseen, through the trees while rubbishy visual effects
represent their limited field of vision) and look like cast-offs
from an old Roger Corman film.
Eventually,
we’re down to the Final Girl, Brianna Brown, who makes her
way into a series of caverns, at which point the film turns into
The Descent. It starts to look better
here, but there’s still precious little actually happening,
and the emotional discovery of her boyfriend, still alive, has
no impact because none of these characters were at all likeable
anyway, so you won’t really give a damn about their ultimate
face.
To be fair, the final 10 minutes of the film really pick up the
pace and start to deliver something more interesting, as our surviving
girl is forced to face her fears and learns that she has to fit
in with the primitives to avoid being killed – rather like
the ending of Last Cannibal World, in fact (hardly
a surprise, as the influence of the jungle cannibal subgenre is
all too obvious throughout). The final shots manage to find an
emotional core that the rest of the film is missing, but unfortunately,
it’s far too little too late.
Primevil is horror by numbers, lifting elements
from other films and mixing them into a generally unsatisfying
whole. It’s not wholly awful, but in the end feels like
a bland TV movie that you’d only sit through if your remote
control laws broken and you couldn’t flick channels.
No
relation to the popular TV show, this is the story of five annoying
wankers who find themselves stranded on a mysterious island after
a castaway they have rescued wrecks their yacht. After spending
too long bickering and moaning, they finally discover an abandoned
camp, where a video recording reveals that the island is inhabited
by strange, primitive humanoids – missing links if you like
– and that a religious hit squad is out to prevent news
of this scientific discovery being revealed. 
Eventually,
we’re down to the Final Girl, Brianna Brown, who makes her
way into a series of caverns, at which point the film turns into
The Descent. It starts to look better
here, but there’s still precious little actually happening,
and the emotional discovery of her boyfriend, still alive, has
no impact because none of these characters were at all likeable
anyway, so you won’t really give a damn about their ultimate
face.