Critic Reviews

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.)

It's not exactly good, but it's not bad, and far from boring.

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.

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.

One of the few monster-crocodile movies that simultaneously tries to rip off "Jaws" and "Meet the Press."

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).

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.

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.

With a little camp, this could have been fun --see "Lake Placid" or "Anaconda."

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.