The Primevals

Finally we have a Harryhausen´s movie in the 21ts century, in 2024. This is incredeible! The tribute they pay to films like Willis O´ Brian stop motion´s FX in King Kong is fantastic!

Against the CGI, we have animatronics, practical FX, some CGI, but low and a story like Harryhausen´s movies told us. Actors are in a second position in this movie; the really stars are the puppets in stop motion (there is one scene where we can see hundreds of them moving). I never thought we could see again something like this in big screen. The technique of stop motion is incredibly well done. The motion of the puppets and the realism in the mixing with real life caracters is incredibly well done!

The plot and the acting is a little bit hole, I mean we see woodden faces and a poor acting but, what the hell? For a fan of Harryhausen´s movie and a person that is bored with CGI, we have here a great achievement.

This is a movie that Joe Dante, John Landis, Guillermo del Toro, Tarantino and Christopher Nolan would like to see; so if you are one of those crazy people that love the old Sci fi B series or Z series cinema, this is yours! Don´t miss it!

Well done Charles Band, David Allen and company from FULL MOON Features!

7 stars out of 10.

Needless to say that I had actually never heard about this 2023 movie titled "The Primevals" prior to sitting down to watch it. But I have to say that I actually found the movie's cover to be cheesy enough to catch my attention. And with it being a movie that I had never even heard about, of course I opted to sit down and watch it.

And with it being a Full Moon Features movie, I figured that chance would be that the movie wouldn't be a complete waste of time, as they regularly do put out something enjoyable and entertaining.

The storyline was actually fair, with some major nods towards the old classic adventures of the 1950s. I have to admit that I was actually enjoying "The Primevals". Writers David Allen and Randall William Cook put together something that proved to be entertaining and enjoyable, with elements of sci-fi and adventure mixed together.

I wasn't familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list, which is something that I do actually enjoy when I sit down to watch a movie. It should be said, though, that the acting performances were fair.

The effects in the movie were fair, but keep in mind that the Yeti and the reptilian creatures are brought to life by stop-animation motion capture, so it looks somewhat out of place and awkward.

My rating of director David Allen's 2023 movie "The Primevals" lands on a six out of ten stars.

We still enjoy stop motion, both the old ones from the childhood of cinema and the new ones.

Personally, I like stop motion much more than computer special effects because it is more unreal and beautiful.

The most valuable part of the movie "the primevals" is the stop motion, followed by the story, and a bit of Leon Russom.

What bothers me is the cold, emotionless and clumsy performances of the actors (except Leon Russom).

Apparently, among the actors of the primevals, the only one who took the movie seriously was Leon Russom.

At the end of the movie, I wished that all the actors in the movie would be killed (it would be better if I killed them myself) so that the movie would have a pleasant ending.

And for a lovely and childish movie, in today's world of serious movies that hit the human brain like a hammer, I say: Thank you David Allen.

Watching this movie I soon found it very familiar in it's production. It seemed to be the good old times of the 1980's when some very good movies were made. This one had very familiar music to what was produced in those times.

I have now seen the IMDb review of michaelprescott-00547 and he enlighted me that this project originated in the late 70's but never saw the light then.

A very nice movie was finally made and I can give this a sound 7 stars. I see that another movie is made or being made this year (2024) by David Allen, but on checking the information, it is a documentary on this movie and probably why it took so long to come to fruition.

Usually when a project has been shelved for a long time it's for a reason - either it's not that good to begin with or there's just not enough time or money to finish it properly. Thankfully The Primevals was the latter.

When I read the film's history I was fascinated by it - a movie almost fifty years in the making just couldn't be otherwise. David Allen had a distant vision of how it was going to be way back in the late sixties but only came as close as shooting it in the mid-nineties but still wasn't able to finish it before his death in 1999. Only twenty years later the movie was picked up to finally be finished and to pay proper respects to its original idea and the people behind the 1990s production. So, was it all worth waiting that long for? Absolutely.

First and foremost, The Primevals is a movie without CGI which is obscenely rare in the 21st century - instead it utilizes stop-motion, animatronics and puppetry to bring its creatures to life - a long forgotten art form since the rise of computers in the late 1970s, and it makes this movie truly stand out above all the recent ones. Sure, the creatures don't look realistic enough this way but this story is not about realism, it's about the soul.

Nowadays people tend to have completely forgotten what cinema is all about - originality, new ideas that give you food for thoughts, something you haven't seen or heard before, and not just a pretty picture with words. Don't get me wrong, The Primevals is no Citizen Kane, nor is it 2001: A space odyssey or even Star Wars - its story is far from being original even remotely as we've seen many alike examples in the 1950s and 1960s during the second Renaissance of stop motion movies but it's something that this work of art represents that makes it worthy being released now, in 2024. I'm sure would it have been released as soon as David Allen pitched his idea to the producers, or even in the 1990s when he shot the movie it would have been instantly lost among its contemporaries but today it ought to be remembered as a relic that's still more relevant and way better than most of its contemporaries.

The stop motion itself is nearly perfect and I was amazed at how well it's handled in the movie. The same was with the music score - simply beautiful, grandiose and is suitable for something more epic than what was on the screen but not less impressive in any way. The only downpoint is probably the actors and their wooden performances that hadn't given us the full spectrum of emotions when on a journey discovering a brand new world - it felt more like they've been doing this every other Sunday. The narrative moves itself here and the actors blindly follow it - it's not that uncommon in adventure flicks but still, it would have been nice to have at least one charismatic character among the bunch presented in The Primevals but there was none.

Overall I feel like no matter when the movie's released and what production hell it's been through The Primevals is a well-crafted picture hands down and I would have given it the same rating despite the circumstances.