Primevil is a fairly typical straight to DVD horror movie, featuring a yacht-load of beautiful rich people shipwrecked on an island inhabited by a tribe of violent ape-like creatures who gruesomely dispatch them one by one.

Executive Produced by late The Empire Strikes Back director Irvin Kershner, and having a decent budget at its disposal, the film seems intent on remaking both Predator and The Descent, to the extent that it actually recreates certain shots and scenes from those films almost exactly.

Of course, it would be wrong to expect too much from this kind of film, and to be fair it does deliver exactly what it should – a few decent jumps and some exciting chase scenes in a visually interesting location.

Unfortunately the cast is pretty poor, and they play every single one of the standard character types you would expect – the resourceful and gutsy heroine, the comedy cowardly Brit and the overweight angry guy are all in here, and no real attempt to be original is made in the by-the-numbers script, which seems to have been written in a hurry.

Some plus points should be given for the side story involving Lance Henricksen’s character, who appears in two or three of the more interesting scenes. This is sadly underused in favour of more shots lifted from the superior films this tries to ape (pun not intended). The plot does turn up one or two minor surprises, although it quickly becomes clear that these are also taken from other films – notably Alien (Some dialogue also seems to have been taken more or less verbatim from that film).

Overall, Primevil is a fun enough creature feature, but as with most B movies like this, it is hard to recommend this as a DVD purchase when the excellent films it attempts to emulate are likely available for far cheaper. Instead, wait for a year or so when this will be one of the better films appearing on the SyFy channel.