Primal (2009)

Primal (2009)
Director: Josh Reed
Writers: Nigel Christensen, Josh Reed
Cast: Krew Boylan, Ch'aska Cuba de Reed, Santiago Cuba de Reed
When a group of students enter a forest with plans of gathering information about an endangered species, they have no idea they are setting themselves up to be eaten. A notorious Sasquatch already responsible for countless deaths stalks the woods, and they may be next on his list of prey.

The film starts in 12,000 years ago, as an Aborigine is cave painting in the Australian outback, before he finishes his work, he's slain by what appears to be some humanoid creature. Cut to present day (courtesy of an MTV styled speedup) and we join a group of students driving through the outback in search of ancient cave paintings, luckily one of the students has an old map she got from her granddad, locating the unseen for years paintings. Isn't very long before the students start to encounter the harsh environment, when insects start to eat through their resources and truck tires. During a nocturnal skinny dip one of the girls is attacked by leeches and starts to turn into some kind of razor toothed flesh craving mutant. Not long before shes munching her way through her friends.

Good solid Oz horror which is a touch reminiscent of The Ruins with shades of Descent thrown in for added tension. I highly enjoyed this for what it was, good acting and a fair amount of gore. Interesting to find out that first time feature director Josh Reed is the son of Colin Eggleston who made a few quality genre movies of his own back in the 70's/80's including Long Weekend & Cassandra. I wouldn't go as far as to call Primal an essential view, but take it for what it is, and it's very a entertaining ride.

(7 out of 10)