Critic Reviews
| 67 |
Entertainment Weekly
Gregory Kirschling
Pit a reptile the size of a school bus against an American TV-news crew in war-scarred Burundi, and you get "Hotel Rwanaconda," a horror movie interested in cheesy scares and drawing attention to the plight of poor Africans. (So no, Primeval is not the '"serial killer'" film promised by the ads.)
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| 50 |
Variety
It's not exactly good, but it's not bad, and far from boring.
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| 40 |
Los Angeles Times
Mark Olsen
Strangely self-serious, and without covering the prerequisites of top-shelf nastiness that contemporary horror requires, this giant crocodile movie turns out to be neither fish nor fowl.
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| 40 |
The New York Times
The screenplay, by John Brancato and Michael Ferris, tosses out a few chewy bits of B-movie wit, most of them supplied by Mr. Jones, who expresses the ambivalence of an African-American visiting the motherland through a series of bitter jokes.
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| 38 |
Boston Globe
Primeval is a hoot if you're in the mood, though, and it gets points for trying to stuff a little globo-think into the minds of Friday night mayhem fans (who will probably rebel, since only one skull pops like a grape).
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| 38 |
New York Post
One of the few monster-crocodile movies that simultaneously tries to rip off "Jaws" and "Meet the Press."
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| 38 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Jason Anderson
Though a few scenes drum up some intensity -- that green ham Gustave makes one last great appearance -- it's mostly grim, dull and ugly, three qualities that nobody wants in a piece of multiplex filler about a surly reptile.
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| 33 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
If there were a shred of sincerity to its straight-faced exposé of African strife, the film would be easier to forgive, but since it's really just a cheap horror-thriller about an ancient predator, the austere tone does it no favors.
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| 30 |
The Hollywood Reporter
A low-rent monster movie that could well have been released by American International in the early 1970s, Primeval boasts a level of cheesiness that should well merit it a regular rotation on late-night cable.
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| 30 |
LA Weekly
Luke Y. Thompson
With a little camp, this could have been fun --see "Lake Placid" or "Anaconda."
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| 25 |
ReelViews
By the end of the film, I was hoping everyone on two legs would die, preferably suffering as much on screen as I was in the audience.
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