PRIMAL

Australia, 2010, 80 minutes, Colour.
Zoe Tuckwell- Smith, Krew Boyland, Lindsay Farris, Rebeka Foord, Damian Freeleagus, Wil Traval.
Directed by Josh Reed.

Primal is a top candidate for a horror Festival, like Monster Films or a Screamathon.

It is an Australian production, set in the outback, though filmed in and around Sydney. It opens with a prologue, 12,000 years ago, with an aboriginal doing paintings on rock, suddenly attacked by a monstrous animal. There are also brief flashbacks during the film indicating an expedition in the 19th century to find the paintings with disastrous results.

The convention is the familiar one, from films like Friday the 13th, where a group of young adults goes to a remote area, are set upon by something mysterious with devastating results and the deaths, one by one, of the group. We see the group travelling by car into the outback to find the paintings, one of the group doing a thesis on them. There is a lot of banter in the car, with one of the girls, Mel, being rather brazen using four letter words. One girl, Anya, objects and says that swearing should have context – which is taken up, right at the end, by Anja as she survives.

All seems well enough when they arrive. Anya, who has had a bad experience with a boyfriend, being trapped in a basement for a week, suffers claustrophobia as they try to take a short cut through caves. The group arrive, set up camp, Anya drives the car around to the rendezvous. All seems normal. They go to visit the paintings, photos taken, notes taken, different interpretations of the central part of the picture. It is only when disaster happens that they realise that the painting is a warning to leave.

The brash Mel goes into a billabong for a swim and is covered in leeches and is gradually transformed into a sharp toothed monstrous version of herself. They had found a large rabbit with similar monstrous teeth and had impaled it near their campsite.

For a lot of the time, when Mel is transformed, there is a lot of effort to warding her off by fire. There is a joker amongst the group, Darren who is supportive of Anya, but he is attacked by Mel, killed and devoured. It would be expected that her boyfriend would be the next to go, even when she bites his arm, but he survives almost to the end. In many ways, it is rather arbitrary who gets killed next – perhaps the cast picking straws as to see whether they survive or not!

We are surprised when Dace, the leader of the group who has been skilful in making a trap to get Mel, is attacked by her and becomes infected, prowling with her to attack the rest of the group. For the rest of the film, the three pick straws as to who will kill Dace, Anya getting the short straw but unable to kill him. They are urged on by Chad, Mel’s boyfriend, who still thinks that he can save her.

Ultimately, Chad suffers the same fate, Chris goes to get the machete, is trapped in the car. Anya overcomes her claustrophobia, goes into the cave, finds Chris, but it is tied to the ground by snakes and Chris gives birth, cutting herself for a Caesarean, to an enormous monster. Some bloggers have complained that the ending is too pat, with Anya overcoming all difficulties and surviving.

Is interesting to note that in the final credits the owners of the land around Manly where the film was made are acknowledged and gratitude expressed to them. Perhaps there is a subtext about venturing into aboriginal sacred grounds, mixed motives, and a certain vengeance wrought.