MovieBabe Blog

Under discussion:

Primeval  (2007)

By Tricia Olszewski 

Inspired by a true story; promoted by a misleading ad campaign. Primeval isn’t about an African “serial killer” who’s taken 300-plus lives and remains lurking. It’s about a crocodile, and to openly compare a crocodile to the likes of Ted Bundy and BTK is—how do I put this?—stupid.

To further disappoint filmgoers expecting a slasher, Primeval doesn’t even focus exclusively on the croc; instead it tries to be a looks-and-brains girl by mixing politics with its gore, à la its big stepsister, Blood Diamond. But don’t balk just yet: This approach potentially doubles the ways in which the annoying lead characters may die. Screenwiters John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris, who also wrote Catwoman—I should give up here, shouldn’t I?—put American television journalists Tim (Dominic Purcell), Aviva (Brooke Langton), and Steven (Orlando Jones) in South Africa to report on the freshwater murderer, dubbed Gustave. Tim is dour and arrogant, and, amazingly, perpetually wearing his shirts half-unbuttoned isn’t the most irritating thing about him: He’s condescending to Aviva because she’s pretty and a relative newcomer and is downright floored when he finds out she attended Columbia. Aviva, on the other hand, is perhaps the most naive journo ever, willing to risk her life to save a puppy but clueless that the natives’ civil war might put them in danger, too. Meanwhile, cameraman Steven is the intended comic relief, but somehow he gets the only lines that pass Dialogue 101. (For an example of the rest, consider the wounded African boy who mutters, “I catch Gustave. Maybe he take me to America!”)

Though Primeval’s cinematography is gorgeous from the start—it was shot on location in South Africa—first-time feature director Michael Katleman seems to have dropped the ball at first, employing the shaky-camera, low-budget style of showing a monster attack without showing the whole monster. We do eventually see the croc in its entertaining entirety, however, with Katleman adding a couple of unique touches to the gruesomeness. (Wait ’til you see one dude’s head pop.) And the corruption and brutality of the local government, which keeps a gun-scoped eye on the crew, is, admittedly, an interesting story in itself. It just belongs in another movie—as, perhaps, do you.

Under discussion:

Black Christmas  (2006)

By Tricia Olszewski 

Funny that the maniac in the holiday gorefest Black Christmas has a taste for tearing people’s eyes out—it might just make you wish the guy would pay you a visit not long after the opening credits roll. Sadly, writer-director Glen Morgan’s remake of 1974’s original isn’t even the worst horror movie of recent months; that doesn’t mean, however, that your mind won’t wander to less mundane activities, such as cleaning up every last pine needle dropped by your bone-dry Christmas tree.

Morgan, who has done some fine, funny work as the scripter for Final Destinations 1 and 3 and as the writer-director for 2003’s Willard, has whiffed here in adapting and adding to Roy Moore’s old screenplay. Billy (Robert Mann) is the dude who makes the young girls cry, an escaped mental patient (aren’t they all?) who wears not a mask but a jaundiced face from the liver disease that made his mother (Karin Konoval) hate him. (Perhaps the caricatured boozehound was hoping she’d given birth to a future donor.) This family 411 is already more background than the first movie offered, but it goes on—and on and on. Different characters are tasked with long, awkward expositions about the freak who once was kept locked in the attic of the very house where a bunch of blank sorority sisters are currently ho-ho-ho-ing. (Among the recognizable actors are Lacey Chabert and Michelle Trachtenberg, though it should be said that the cast is uniformly bad.) But a hole can only be filled so much. Really, do you need to know anything else once a murderer is shown baking a family member’s flesh into Christmas cookies?

Worse than hearing about Billy’s entire permanent record are master-of-the-obvious lines such as “He’s in the attic!” (after somebody, while pointing upward, twice calls the cell phone of one of the missing that can be heard up above them) and typical but too ridiculously drawn slasher-movie clichés, such as the bad guy’s apparent teleporting abilities and targets who are way, way dumber than usual. Morgan does get a bronze-plated star for pulling off a few creepy visuals of the stalker and, well, actually that’s about it.