Primeval is a mega-crocodile on the rampage film with political overtures and insulting racial stereotyping.Tim Manfrey (Dominic Purcell) is a disgraced journalist who along with Aviva Masters (Brooke Langton) and Steven Johnson (Orlando Jones) are sent to Burundi to hunt and film a legendary killer crocodile who has just killed a white forensic expert working with the UN who are investigating war crimes.The meet up with a crocodile expert Matt Collins (Gordon Emery) who has plans to capture it alive and grizzled tracker Jacob Krieg (Jurgen Prochnow) and attempt to capture the croc.The group try to bait the croc unsuccessfully but they are soon set upon by the local vicious warlord in the area and among the chaos the croc starts to attack.This is less of a horror film but more of a low rent Jaws rip off with a political message regarding the ongoing war in the Burundi/Rwanda region all undone with almost all the black Africans who are portrayed as savages, killers and rapists.The film actually feels slow as our ill equipped team bicker and seem dysfunctional as they head upon their quest. You get the feeling early on that the provided security personnel will soon turn upon them but the action scenes seems to be oddly patterned with the CGI croc's appearance depends much on the dictates of the script rather than part of any coherent storytelling. The giant crocodile also moves like greased lightning it seems.Orlando Jones is there for comic relief and hopefully he was paid well for that slavery line. This is no Lake Placid.

The cast is okay and the production quality is good enough to make this kind of watchable, otherwise, the movie is just all over the place. African politics, native tribes, betrayal, sabotage, shamans, rocket launchers, black-guy-comedy and what not and then also there is a crocodile, for some reason. So what is this movie about? There is a lot of stuff aimlessly thrown around, genres mixed, but no part of it is going anywhere. Scenes are pasted together randomly and taking out any of them wouldn't generally influence the plot at all.Now there is at least the crocodile, you might think, but if you're looking for a creature feature, look elsewhere. The croc is not believable or awesome in any way, disregarding it's 10 tons or so it has the agility of your average urban squirrel, moving so fast you barely see what's going on at all, making this part randomly pasted in CGI animation.All this is hard to forgive already, but then the movie also totally fails to build up any kind of tension. There is something going on and then suddenly you get a minute of flying crocodile, people firing rockets at each other, or whatever and then you're back to the pointless "plot" where nothing actually develops. What makes this boat sink, is that there is absolutely no suspense going on and you'll find yourself looking at your watch frequently.Bad, boring, stupid movie.3/10

If you think Schindler's List would have been better if it had werewolves in it, if you wish there had been a sea monster in Titanic or if you believe the Civil War epic Glory would have been improved if it had featured an alien robot…Primeval is just the movie for you. All other normal people should probably avoid this film.Tim Manfrey (Dominic Purcell) is a network news producer who's just had one of the stories blow up in his face. Partly as punishment and partly to get him out of sight, his boss assigns him to cover the search and capture of a giant crocodile in Central Africa. Tim gets teamed up with a pretty reporter named Aviva Masters (Brooke Langton) who is looking to prove herself and Matthew Collins (Gideon Emery), who will lead the effort to capture the croc. Tim's wisecracking cameraman Steven Johnson (Orlando Jones) tags along. Once in Africa, the team hooks up with their guide, Jacob Krieg (Jurgen Prochnow), demonstrating that even in 21st century cinema, no one knows more about hunting in Africa than white guys. An African teenager named Jojo (Gabriel Malema) tags along as they head off in pursuit of Gustave. That's what the natives have named the giant croc, who gained a taste for human flesh because of all the bodies dumped into the river by government and rebel forces. As our intrepid group gets picked off one at a time by either Gustave or by soldiers loyal to a local African warlord, viewers will be left wondering why they didn't do something more productive with their time. Like bite off their toenails.Primeval is one of those horror movies that has a funny black guy in it. When the funny black guy lives, that's usually a sign the film is trying to do something different. It may not succeed, but it's making the attempt. When the funny black guy dies, that's normally the mark of a movie that's just going through the motions. The funny black guy dies in Primeval. There's really not much more to say. This thing is basically one of the giant monster movies they show Saturday nights on the SyFy channel, just with better production values. It's professional and efficient and not excessively stupid for this sort of thing, but it simply has no worthwhile qualities at all.If you're a fan of giant monster movies, you should probably know that Primeval is only 40% about the giant crocodile. The other 60% is about what a Godforsaken nightmare Central Africa is. It's not all that preachy about who's responsible for all the war, genocide and suffering that's been going on for decades there, but it is more than a bit offensive when the funny black guy starts talking about how slavery wasn't that bad a deal since it got his ancestors out of Africa.Watching this movie won't make you want to claw your own eyes out. That's the best thing I can say about Primeval.

"Primeval" can only be regarded as a minor classic of the "true suspense" genre. Unfortunately, upon its release, it was publicized as a straight up horror film. That it isn't. Actually, it has a lot more going on than most - and offers much more of a payoff as a result. Dominic Purcell leads an impressive cast (including Orlando Jones and Brooke Langton) in a "true" story of the search for a killer crocodile in war-torn Burundi, an African country besieged by warlords and destructive civil unrest. Impressive direction raises the bar for this thriller, which I found to be very effective in both suspense and social relevancy. In fact, as Film Appreciation instructor at a state university, I showed the film to my students and we broke it down to its constituent elements. All agreed that it was a well directed, well acted addition to the suspense-thriller genre and unfairly overlooked upon its release. Yes, the studio should have sold it as something other than a "horror" film, but one cannot fault the film itself for a misleading advertising campaign.