Primal Rage

Primal Rage: Directed by Patrick Magee and written by Jay Lee and Patrick Magee

It has been a while since my last review. I had to take a bit of a break to recharge my batteries to bring more thoughts on movies that doesn't include the phrase it wasn't the best movie but it wasn't the worst in every single review. I'm so tired of seeing this. You don't have to use this phrase to describe a middle of the road but enjoyable movie. You can say you enjoy the film without justifying it's place in the pantheon of movie placement. I hope that made sense.

This brings us to the movie Primal Rage: The Legend of Oh-Mah or Primal Rage: Bigfoot reborn. This played for one night only in theatres as a Fathom Event. I always find that fascinating when Fathom Events does this with movies that no one has heard of and there are no trailers for it. How does that even work exactly? I understand when they did it with Rob Zombie's 31 and Kevin Smith's Yoga Hosers, both terrible movies with some good qualities. This one though was a very odd what the hell so naturally I set about trying to track it down, trying to track down any reviews for it. Nothing.

But finally I found it and got the chance to watch and what I got was Bigfoot Predator with the witch from Sleepy Hollow thrown in for good measure to add some mystical qualities to the narrative. This movie felt like a hodge podge of elements thrown in there to maximumize the one chance this filmmaker might have to make a movie. It does draw you in a bit but it takes too long to get to the point where the Oh-Mah is hunting them. They run across a large group of hunters with rapey tendencies and they lose their clothes along the way(The main characters that is) in a vain attempt to draw out some vulnerability. Like being hunted by Bigfoot Voorhees wasn't enough.

The performances were okay. I thought the actor who played Max was really one note and nothing felt genuine with him. The actors playing the native Americans fared a bit better but still suffered with dialogue that was forced and robotic from them. That witch character though was straight out of a cartoon and really out of place in this movie. I understood what they were trying to do. They were trying to add more to the story than just surviving the monster in the woods. It would be a better film if they had streamlined everything into what worked.

What worked were the effects. They were top notch. Those deaths are grisly and gory and just excellent stuff. The bigfoot creature is also beautiful and really well done. The effects work are the highlight of this film which makes sense since the director comes from an effects background.

This movie is okay. It is definitely a middle of the road film with too much fat around the edges but it is an enjoyable creature feature. I can't recommend it but if you decide to check it out, it's enjoyable.