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Primal
From Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment
Directed by Josh Reed
Starring: Krew Bolan (Mel), Zoe Tuckwell-Smith (Anja), Wil Traval (Dace), Lindsay Farris (Chad), Rebekah Foord (Kris), & Damien Freeleagus (Warren)

Winner of the 2010 Audience Favorite Award at FRIGHTFEST

Synopsis: Six friends travel deep into the Australian outback to study ancient cave paintings. After one of the girls takes a late night swim, she becomes violently ill and slowly regresses into a vicious, predatory state...She has gone 'Primal'.
Now, for the remaining friends, it is kill or be killed.



This is truly a film made with the soul purpose of stringing together some tense drama with some fairly impressive action scenes.
Don't go looking for answers in this one, you wont get them. Make them up yourself.
There is little to no real explanation as to what the heck causes this primal state in people but we are shown that it is something that happened as far back as 12,000 years ago. There are some flashes, and I really mean flashes of scenes that lead me to believe that Anja's great, great, great uncle may have had to face this evil as well. Not sure on that, just guessing.

No new ground is broken with story in this one. A bunch of very attractive people, interested in things that most very attractive people aren't, trudging out into the middle of nowhere with little to no plan if anything goes wrong. This is text book bad thinking of course. EVERYTHING goes wrong.

There is some attempt to give some depth to the characters, but their back story is pretty involved to be just tossed around off-handedly. Mel is a little too wild for her more reserved boyfriend, Chad. Anja was apparently abused and held captive by a past boyfriend leaving her with some issues and a severe case of claustrophobia, and Dace... Really not sure about him really. Apparently he is a student and apparently these long lost cave paintings are his ticket to a thesis and a job. Kris is just there to be helpful and be VERY helpful to Dace, if you catch my meaning. Warren is the "That guy" of the bunch. Bit of a jerk, but with a soft spot, and a weird sense of humor.

You may get the impression at this point that I didn't like the film so I should clarify that I actually did enjoy it. I just don't want anyone going into this looking for anything more than what it was. It does try to be more at times, and I think they did themselves a disservice by doing so.

Good amount of gore without being ridiculous with impressive action scenes and surprisingly suspenseful moments in between, but an ending that will leave you scratching your head if you try to find anything deeper than what it looks like.

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"Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars"