Primal Darkness mixes low-budget found footage filmmaking with creature horror, eerie surroundings and plenty of reasons to stay out of the woods.
Plot
Cole Harrington, the host of a popular outdoor series, sets out to track down the predator responsible for a series of cattle attacks in rural Nevada. The mystery deepens when he uncovers footage depicting the final moments of two missing university employees.
Good Points
- The atmosphere – There’s a proper feeling here of being stuck somewhere you really don’t want to be, and the film gets quite a lot out of the setting without needing to constantly show you something.
- The sound is probably my favourite part – There are some genuinely creepy noises going on in the background, and sometimes hearing something you can’t see is more effective than actually seeing the bloody thing.
- Dillon Brown is good. He feels believable enough in the role, which is important with found footage because bad acting can make the whole thing fall apart pretty quickly.
- The creature is actually pretty creepy – I did also like that it isn’t immediately shoved in your face, because once you start seeing too much of a horror creature it usually becomes considerably less interesting.
- There are some good creepy moments – It’s now a film that relies on constnt cheap jump scares, so when the film starts to try and get more unsettling it worked OK at times.
- It feels like found footage – There are times when the camera work gets a bit annoying, but for the most part it doesn’t feel like a normal horror film that has simply decided to pretend it’s found footage.
Bad Points
- It takes too long to get going – I don’t mind a slow start, but there are points where I was basically waiting for the film to get on with it.
- The middle section doesn’t work as well – The change in perspective throws things off a bit too much, and became less interesting the more it went on.
- Some of the decisions are bloody stupid – Then again, if horror characters suddenly started making sensible decisions we’d probably have a lot fewer horror films.
- The tension isn’t consistent enough – there are some good stretches, but it doesn’t keep that same uncomfortable feeling consistently enough.
- I wanted a bit more from the ending – It isn’t terrible, but after some of the better moments earlier on, I was expecting it to go slightly harder.
Final Verdict on Primal Darkness
I liked it more when it was being creepy and mysterious than when it was trying to move the story along I have to say, and I thought the atmosphere was good, and the sound works well enough, but the biggest problem for me is that it takes a while to get anywhere, and once the perspective changes in the middle it lost me a bit – but it was watchable enough.
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