"Inspired by the true story of a legendary 25-foot, man-eating crocodile, Primeval roars and rampages onto Blu-ray Disc. Starring Dominic Purcell and Orlando Jones, this edge-of-your-seat horror thriller will blow your mind in this almost unbearably intense format." Taken from the back of the "Primeval" box...um yah, that about describes it.

"Primeval" is at its core, awful. Like the box states, it is based on a 25-foot, man-eating crocodile that won't stop until it draws more blood. A news team is sent to South Africa to tape, capture, and bring home the man-eating crocodile, called Gustave by the locals. Upon arrival, they begin their hunt, following the trail of this crocodile, but all the while they don't realize that they themselves are being hunted.

I can't say enough about how bad "Primeval" is. It is at best a forgettable film, but it probably shouldn't have ever been made. The acting is weak, and even Orlando Jones can't seem to make us laugh even a couple of times. As you can tell the storyline is terrible. There wasn't a time in my viewing that I actually said, "Wow, that was a neat scene." During my waste of time, I was actually able to laugh at the so-called "scary" moments that were supposed to frighten me. The crocodile animation was okay, but again, forgettable.

If you are looking for a mindless "action" flick that has nothing going for it, than "Primeval" is for you. I didn't jump once, and I never actually felt for any of the characters as they were being eaten alive. I found myself waiting for the next crocodile attack and hoping that the characters would at least put up a good fight. In the end, "Primeval" is an unmemorable action flick that was advertised as a "horror/serial killer" flick. If you want crocodiles, go watch "Lake Placid" and enjoy a few minutes of it.

The DVD

Video:

Okay, so "Primeval" does have some things going for it. The video is actually really nice. It has its problems but overall a very nice transfer. First of all, the flesh tones are fantastic with great detail. The colors "pop" at you very nicely, but a lot of times suffer a yellow coloring with too high of contrast at times. I am not sure if the yellow tone was on purpose but I didn't dig it all that much. If you get past the yellow, the overall video was great!

Sound:

Here we get a 5.1 PCM Uncompressed and a 5.1 Dolby Digital track. The surrounds are actually quite nice and tend to fill up the speakers very well. As the crocodile hunts and surges towards our mindless victims, we hear it coming in every direction, which...if it could possibly help...it does kinda. There are times when the dialogue is a little quiet, but overall a fantastic track that does a great job immersing us into the film.

Extras:

Croc-umentary: Bringing Gustave to Life: This is a documentary on the "Real" Gustave. We go over the process behind creating Gustave in CG and piecing the picture together after the creation of the CG elements. This is actually pretty detailed and is surprisingly informative.

Deleted Scenes with Commentary by Director Michael Katleman & Visual Effects Supervisor Paul Linden: We get three deleted scenes that are truly awful and deserved to be cut.

Audio Commentary with Director Michael Katleman & Visual Effects Supervisor Paul Linden: Katleman and Linden talk about creating and bringing this "true" story to the screen. They talk a lot about how "fantastic" their actors were in bringing the characters to life, the locations, the shooting, and end up providing us with a couple points of interest about the real croc. Unfortunately this commentary track will only appeal to die hard "Primeval" fans.

Movie Showcase: Yippeee...go croc go!

Final Thoughts:

"Primeval" is not even close to a good film. The acting is weak, the CG elements are good at times, but still fail to impress. Although a man-eating croc story sounds interesting...it wasn't. Surprisingly we get a fantastic audio and video track that made "Primeval" at least pretty and easy on the ears! Overall, I have to tell you to skip this one.