Primal

While navigating with his girlfriend Alexis (Brianna Brown) and his partners and friends Chris (Hadley Fraser) and Tom (Nick Mennell) and his girlfriend Anna (Emily Foxler) to a close a Broadband Internet access business in Asia in the motor pleasure yacht of Joe (Marc Bacher), they rescue a wounded drowned man in shock. During the night, the stranger overrides the automatic pilot and steers the vessel to change the direction; however he accidentally wrecks on a rock and the vessel sinks. The castaways reach a beach in an island and they try to contact the coast-guard through the radio. However, during the night, the body of the stranger vanishes from the grave and then Tom also disappears. The group decides to seek-out Tom and sooner they find that the wild jungle has hostile inhabitants that hunt in pack and the survivors are the prey.

"The Lost Tribe" is a remake of the weak "The Forgotten Ones", with the same storyline, a better development of the castaways and a ridiculous sub-plot of a priest (Lance Henriksen) that seems to be inspired in "Rambo" that kills a group of researchers to avoid them to release information about the discovery of the missing link in human evolution. Despite having no religion, I hate this sort of disrespectful campaign against the Catholic Church promoted by some filmmakers in the cinema industry with obscure intentions. The plot is flawed and there is no development of the key character performed by the decadent Lance Henriksen. The beautiful and sexy Brianna Brown is totally wasted in a spendable character with laughable lines that wears only bikini and to tell the truth, I only liked the characters and performances of Emily Foxler and the creatures. If you have already seen "The Forgotten Ones", "The Lost Tribe" will give you the sensation of déjà vu. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "A Tribo II" ("The Tribe II")

Don't expect expect Lance Henriksen to work any major skills on this throw-away title. Putting in a total of 5 minutes on screen for a ridiculous subplot about an anti-scientific conspiracy within the (presumably Roman Catholic) "Church," Hollywood's go-to villain- for-hire phones it in for a paycheck.

And yet the film makers - who clearly missed the 1950 Papal encyclical stating there's no conflict between evolution and RC faith - waste the actors time and our patience on the abundantly absurd idea that finding the missing link - in the Americas, no less - is worth sending a hit-team after anthropologists. And that somehow, this species is still alive, and larger and more powerful than modern humans and (as is obvious to anyone who's taken high school biology), simian predecessors.

But this preposterous back story - which could have been ditched for a perfectly serviceable mutants-on-an-island movie - represents the only original idea here. A boatload of yuppie monster fodder crashes on an island. They're attacked by unseen mutants. You're better off wasting money on The Killer Shrews. At least you won't be annoyed by monsters barking faux Klingon, and all the Predator plagiarism (unseen killers in the trees; infra-red mutant point-of-view; and a protagonist blending in by being covered with muck).

On the plus side, the acting is competent, and the photography is pretty good. The mutant makeup is excellent. And yet, as Steven King notes in one of his essays, better stories never show the monster.

This is not a very good movie. I watched it on the sci-fi channel so I wasn't expecting it to be Oscar winning material and it wasn't. The comparison to Predator is valid when it comes to the creatures and how they see the human targets (quite a bit of monster eye view scenes). The acting isn't great but then again, most of the time its just the victims running around, screaming. The plot is certainly weak but if you are looking at this movie and complaining about details such as how the radio still works after washing up on the beach, this is not your movie. Turn off the critical thinking.

The movie begins by laying down the premise. Woman archaeologist finds missing link. Church wants her dead and her findings covered up. She is killed and then assassins are killed by creatures. Main characters wonder in after all this and have nothing to do with the archaeologist and the church. The church wanting to cover up proof of evolution is not terribly hard to believe but sending a group of brutal assassins is certainly over the top but even that isn't a new concept as Tom Hanks has been battling Vatican assassins over the course of two movies now.

So after they crash on the island its a lot of running around and stupidity. There is an argument and a main character walks off (wanting to be alone for a bit) and we are completely shocked that he disappears. This sets off the rest to go searching for him and the hunt begins in earnest.

You don't see any of the 'lost tribe' until the last 10 minutes of the movie and I was pleasantly surprised to see them as they weren't terribly bad, I could even say they were rather well done. Hybrid creatures that show part human part ape. They look more ape like in the way they move but more upright standing and they obviously have a language they speak, ritual and hierarchy.

Acting is, by far, not the worst but far from the best, monster affects are better than your average low budget and are the best part of the movie but only shown in the last 10-15 minutes of the movie. Script and originality are the real weak points.

All in all it was better than I expected but I was expecting it to be so bad I would not finish it (like many sci-fi channel movies).

First of all, yes, THE LOST TRIBE does contain several similarities to earlier films such as PREDATOR and THE DESCENT. In fact, some could be called outright lifts. In addition, the idea of "the church" sending out a hit squad to cover up "proof of evolution" is absurd.

However, it somehow works in spite of these glaring flaws.

The characters are believable enough, with Anna (Emily Baldoni) being the unexpected standout. The creatures are better than expected, full of primal menace. While much of the movie is indeed derivative and the story line is rather inane, the final 30 minutes are worth the pain.

Lance Henriksen fans take note: His screen time amounts to about a minute and a half...

I did actually think The Lost Tribe would be sort of fun, due to its idea. But I didn't like the film very much. There are redeeming values and they were that it was beautifully shot, Emily Foxler is quite likable and although they're underused the creatures do have some menace to them. Otherwise, the story is unoriginal, all too similar to Predator and The Forgotten Ones, and is not helped by dull pacing and a ridiculous subplot involving a Catholic Priest. The script is unfocused and cheesy especially with Brianna Brown, with not enough mystery or character development, the characters I didn't care for at all either finding them stock or unnecessary. There are some scenes that were poorly done due to either bad acting or direction, I am especially talking about the scene on the beach which also had inconsistent continuity and the unintentionally funny scene in the cave. The climax was decent though, it just came too late to care. The acting is nothing to write home about, Foxler I liked, but Brianna Brown is wasted with some of the worst material of the movie and Lance Henrikssen tries hard but the unnecessary character and ridiculous subplot spoils things significantly. All in all, an unoriginal and dull movie, not an abomination but should have been much more. 3/10 Bethany Cox