Primal cuts to the chase—and the scares—and the gore

What an apt title for this 2009 film, because when you watch it, you don’t care about plot or characterization—all you want is blood, horror, and scares. And Primal delivers. I LOVE this film. It’s Demons, Cabin Fever,and The Descent all rolled up into one full-speed-ahead frightfest.

Group of sexy young people goes to woods—who cares why? Ancient paintings on a cave wall, nasty bug infestation, a bite by a freaky rabbit (which brings back my childhood trauma of Bugs Bunny in “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hare”), skinny dipping in a pond filled with leeches. Which encounter is really causing this group of sexy kids to turn into hideous beasts with blazing monster eyes and gnarly teeth and fangs?

Again, who cares! All that matters is the terror it creates in this quickly paced horror. The demon-like monsters are purely animal, looking to devour and destroy their prey as they run, leap, and screech like banshees. Eek! It’s heart-stopping  fear from beginning to end. You can barely imagine what you would do if you were stuck in the middle of the woods and all your friends began to turn into these heinous beasts.

This film is the perfect length at an hour and twenty-five minutes (every horror movie should be less than an hour and a half), with gruesome kills and jump scares aplenty, awesomely effective dark lighting and campfire shadows, fantastically freaky monster makeup, and one dude with a drop-dead gorgeous body that he shows off in nothing but tight black undies. He’d be on the menu if I went primal, black undies and all….