Primal

I first saw this almost a decade back on a dvd which I own. Revisited it recently on a fast forward mode. It is a rehash of the The Forgotten Ones by the same producers as they became obsessed with the idea of Predator, Descent n Ford Coppola's Dracula or mayb they wanted to splurge the money earned on interest. But the original cast n crew were not fools to reshoot the entire film.

Be careful to avoid wasting time on this turkey, so be aware of the various titles this film is known as, Primevil, Primal, The Lost Tribe, etc. I hope Lance Henriksen charged the producers good money for his 2 mins appearance.

The lead girl escapes the creatures many times/she is not killed by the creatures quickly while the other characters r jus bumped off quickly. The ending is very convenient n a real piece of cake.

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...

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.

A group of young adults crashes their boat on some island, and they encounter a race of primates that is maybe the missing link or maybe something else. It's not really clear, but one thing is certain: they are deadly.

This movie is stupid for a number of reasons, the first being that they have no clue what they're talking about with Catholics -- the film features a King James version of the Bible (not a Catholic one) and says the motive is evolution denial. Believe it or not, the Catholic Church believes in evolution! This is also obviously a "Predator" ripoff based on the cover art, and the creatures' vision. The beasts in the film don't even really look like the cover, so it's a ripoff and misleading.

Where is this? 5 hours north of the Antilles... is that where evolution occurred? I don't know, but I doubt it, as that would be off the American coast.

Lance Henriksen appears, and tries to save the film... but fails.

About 75% of the time, all you see is darkness and outlines, sometimes with some crunching noises and people screaming. That approach is OK for a horror movie when used in moderation: here it's used so much they might as well have been filming from inside a closet. With the door shut.

Except for the anthropologist (or whoever she was) character, the acting looks like a You-Tube video somebody at a drunken frat party shot of his friends when they were all beyond hammered. All of these characters are obviously there for no other purpose than to become roadkill pizza for the creatures. There's one recognizable actor in the cast, whose purpose is even more baffling; he's an extra bad guy but who knows what his motivations are. And it never matters or changes anything anyway. I guess the actor had some free time and worked on the cheap.

The movie brazenly cuts and pastes direct images from Predator and several other movies. The creatures (that you can hardly ever see) grunt Kling-On and chase the scientist blonde all over the place, and then let her go. Then chase her some more. She thinks they might be the long sought-after Missing Link, but who knows? They show more skill, intelligence, and adaptability than some modern humans, such as whoever was responsible for this silliness.