SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

organised Primal Force gave me as much laughter as any comedy I can remember in recent years. It was so bad throughout, it was almost good and I HAD to watch it again to make sure I wasn't just imagining it. There is always scope for a cliché low budget sci-fi/horror/action film to go wrong. If Primal Force was to be compared to meal, it would have to be 'Cheesy Chips'. Students will know what I am talking about.Much has already been said about the wastage of Ron Perlman's talents on this movie, how badly made it is, how stupid the plot is, how low budget it is, how bad the effects are, how unconvincing the killer mutant baboons are, etc, etc. And all that is true in my opinion.However, if what you want is a low budget b-movie that's as tacky as fondue and makes you laugh out loud, then this is just your cup of tea. I feel there is something to like about genre films like this. Primal Force promised to be really bad right from the start and for me it delivered the goods and I was entertained as well as amused.For all it's flaws, short-comings, it's lashings of cheesy clichés and predictable outcomes, I really enjoyed myself. The mutant killer primates are hilarious. And, then there's the mad professor who's totally lost the plot. His experiment has gone pear-shaped with disastrous consequences. Inspired stuff. Such a volume of laughter gives me a sense of warmth and well-being. So I thank everyone who conspired to create Primal Force for that!

Paul Andrews The made for TV film Primal Force begins with Frank Brodie (Ron Pearlman) waking up from a recurring nightmare about his mate being killed by some Baboons. There is a knock on Frank's door, he answers it & standing before him is a guy named Scott Davis (Mark Kiely) who has been told that he knows San Miguel Island better than anyone else & that he needs his help to lead a rescue mission as a plane recently crashed there. Eventually Brodie agrees, together with a female medic named Tara Matthews (Roxana Zal) a computer guy named Stan Kovacs (Julian Sedgwick) & Eddie Mendoza (Guillermo Rios) who carries a gun, gets in the way & does very little else, they set off for San Miguel Island. Meanwhile on the Island itself the three survivors, the pilot (Jimy Hefner), a real estate guy named Deutsch (Richard Fancy) & a pretty young girl named Kelsey Cunningham (Kimberlee Peterson) whose Father is interested in buying the Island, are deciding what to do when a group of vicious genetically altered Baboons kill the pilot. Kelsey & Deutsch just sort of run away. Our heavily armed group of rescuers, lead by Brodie, arrive on the Island via boat. Scott feels Brodie is withholding some information but they troop on regardless of all the human & animal skulls they find. They find Kelsey & Deutsch but they are all attacked by the genetic Baboons. The Baboons now know they're on the Island & will stop at nothing to kill the intruders as Brodie has to use his experience & firepower to keep everyone alive, with varying degrees of success. If that wasn't enough the guy (Bruno Danza) driving the boat has buggered off leaving them stranded & the Baboons have killed Kovacs & destroyed the radio equipment. As the survivors run low on ammo & morale they decide to fight back against the Baboons!Directed by Nelson McCormick I thought Primal Force was an OK time waster but nothing that overly impressed me. The script by Micheal Thoma is about as clichéd as you expect of this sort of low budget TV production. First the characters, there's the moody, unshaven hero with personal demons to exorcise but turns out be be a throughly decent chap in the end, the clean cut hero, the computer whizz, the tough female character, the token nobody who is there to die & nothing else just so something happens & the character who has other more mysterious motives for being on the Island. The innocent plane crash victims aren't any better with the young pretty girl who screams a lot & the annoying selfish fat guy who doesn't care about anyone but himself. Then there's the story, a group becomes stranded in an isolated location & can't call for help, sound familiar? Group encounter living threat that wants to kill them all for no real reason at all, group run low on ammo even though they never actually run out & have to come up with other ways to defeat their enemy in a nail-biting (not) climax, been done yeah? Genetic experiments gone wrong. One character who gets abducted by the enemy & is not killed for some unexplained reason unlike everyone else who are killed on sight. You probably get the message. Having said all that for what it is I thought Primal Force was OK & rolled out the clichés with a certain degree of entertainment value. Ron Pearlman as the muscle bound, wise cracking Brodie is great & almost makes Primal Force worth watching on his own, everyone else is utterly forgettable. Unfortunately one area where Primal Force loses a couple of stars is in the violence department, basically it hasn't got any. This was obviously made with a fairly young teenage audience in mind as the blood, gore & nastiness is kept to an absolute minimum. The killer Baboons are just people in monkey suits, nothing particularly spectacular. Technically Primal Force is OK, it's very MTV in style with quick cuts, jerky hand held camera movements during the attacks, slow motion, bleached colours & every other flashy pointless trick you can think of. On the plus side the Mexican locations on occasion look stunning & a few nice shots here & there captures it well. Overall Primal Force isn't particularly good, but it ain't particularly bad either just sort of average & I think a decent helping of blood & gore would have helped no end to improve it!

sibisi73 Deliriously awful mish-mash of 'Congo' and 'The Island Of Dr. Moreau' with Ron Perlman leading a rescue mission to find the survivors from a crashed plane on a remote tropical island. His is the only character with any kind of backstory, given that he escaped the island after the genetically mutated baboons ran amok killing all the playboy hunters they'd been so delicately reared to entertain. How did this ever look like a good idea? Any remotely interesting subplot about the dangers of messing with nature are jettisoned for a below average action flick featuring some of the dumbest people you've ever seen. Once we are on the island it's just one long game of hide and seek, with no development whatsoever, and, unforgivably, the one person you'd like to see eaten first actually survives! Totally, irredeemably bad, with the least scary monsters since Dr. Who - unless you're petrified by huge poodles.

Helen Chavez Not bad for a TV movie, but - well, could have been a whole lot better, both script and direction-wise. The baboons weren't that convincing either. (Trying to be kind, here ...)Its one saving grace was a fine, well-observed performance by Ron Perlman as the nightmare-ridden guide, Frank Brodie. Always a delight to watch, he brought much-needed gravitas to an otherwise run-of-the-mill film. Haunted, grouchy and cynical, he shone in a cast that was generally lack-lustre.Great star - shame about the movie.