‘American Primeval’ Review: Netflix’s Violent, Bloody Saga Of The American Frontier Is A Harrowing Watch

Netflix’s new Western series is a bleak and bloody affair.

American Primeval pulls no punches in its six-episode limited run. Murder, rape and mayhem and suicide fill this relentlessly brutal world. The only thing more deadly than the frontier itself is the men who occupy it: Conniving Mormon settlers, ruthless Native American tribes, greedy bounty hunters. And a few good men and women, fighting to survive amidst all the malice and depravity.

It reminded me so much of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s 2015 film The Revenant, that I wasn’t the least bit surprised to discover it was written by the same person, Mark L. Smith. The shared DNA between film and limited series is obvious in every frame, though The Revenant is more focused and poetic and leans more heavily on the caliber of its stars.

“Primeval” refers to a time before history, to the earliest days of humankind, and evokes a certain sense of raw primitiveness. It’s a fitting title for a series about the American frontier at its bloodiest and least romantic. I thought often of Thomas Hobbes’s famous quotation from Leviathan, succinctly describes the show’s world: “No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

“There’s a difference between civilization and civilized,” Shea Whigham’s character, Jim Bridger, tells Betty Gilpin’s Sara Rowell, when she finds herself at Fort Bridger, surrounded by violent and unpredictable men. “You should go back to Boston where there’s more of both.”

Rowell, however, cannot go back to Boston. She has a price on her head and has traveled west with her young son, Devin (Preston Mota) to escape certain death. Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Bridger introduces her to the solitary mountain man, Isaac Reed. Taylor Kitsch plays this strong and silent bearded loner and does so with a ferocity and passion I haven’t really seen from the actor before, though he’s had some great roles over the years. It’s all the makings of a great romance. The gruff and weathered reluctant hero. The damsel in distress. But this is not a romance, however much it toys with the idea.

There are two almost entirely distinct stories at play in American Primeval. The first follows Sara and Isaac on their harrowing flight across the mountains of the Utah territory, through snowy forests filled with wolves and bandits, accompanied by the young Native girl, Two Moons (Shawnee Pourier) on the run from her own tragic life. Everyone here has a tragic past behind them, and most have a tragic future waiting just around the river bend.

In the second main storyline we are immersed in the violent, bloody conflict known as the Mormon War that took place in 1857-1858 in what is now Utah and Wyoming. In this conflict, Sons of Anarchy alum Kim Coates plays LDS leader, Brigham Young, portrayed here as a ruthless, fanatical villain who will stop at nothing to establish a home for his people.

The events are loosely based on the Mountain Meadows Massacre, which saw Mormon militiamen of the Utah Territorial Militia, or Nauvoo Legion, slaughter at least 120 members of the Baker-Fancher wagon train. In some details, the show follows history quite closely. The militiamen hire Paiutes and make the attack look like the work of Native Americans. The actual battle that ensued lasted days, but in the show it’s over in minutes. In both, the militia kills witnesses in order to cover up the slaughter, though many liberties are taken here, including the advent of a number of fictional characters who survive the assault. In the show, Brigham Young is chief architect of all hostilities, whereas there remains debate among historians and scholars over his involvement in the historical record.

No matter, we aren’t meant to watch American Primeval as a true-to-history retelling of events, but rather as a kind of parable on the brutality of man, the ways prejudice and misunderstanding and fear and greed can bring out the worst in us, and occasionally the best.

The Shoshone tribe has its share of violent warriors, but overall they’re portrayed as brave and honorable people who simply want to be left alone by all the white settlers, Mormon or otherwise. Captain Dellinger of the US Army is an honorable man who only seeks the truth, and whose writing is filled with hope for a better future. Isaac Reed, however lost he is to the world, is a courageous and compassionate man who risks everything to help perfect strangers. Same with Two Moons. And Whigham steals every scene he’s in as the affable, world-weary Bridger.

Abish Pratt (Saura Lightfoot-Leon) plays a young Mormon woman who survives the Meadows Massacre and is taken in—at first against her will—by Shoshone brave, Red Feather (Derek Hinkey). Both these characters are people I wish we had explored more in this short six-episode series. This is a problem of either too much or too little. We have too few episodes to explore every character enough; either that, or we have too much going, and too many characters to follow.

While American Primeval is economical in its runtime, of the twin storylines running throughout, only one feels as though it has a satisfactory ending. And while they each start in the same place, the two stories end with virtually no connective tissue remaining. Either would have made for a good show or movie, but there’s little reason to feature both in the same series. Had they somehow circled around in the end, connecting the characters and stories from both, I’d feel differently. As it stands, after the massacre they become almost entirely distinct. We shift back and forth between the two, but other than taking place in the same general area at the same time, nothing remains to bridge the gap.

Justin Lubin/Netflix

Still, while the entire affair is bleak and violent and depressing in its nasty, brutish portrayal of the state of nature, I enjoyed American Primeval a great deal. I am a fan of Westerns. I like stripped down, sparse stories that are as much about the feeling and atmosphere as they are about the characters. Blood Meridian leaps to mind. The American frontier is as much a character here as any of the speaking parts, similar to The Revenant. And the attention to detail in the costumes and sets is extraordinary. I love how dirty everyone is, covered in dirt and grime, living hard in a hard world. I wish more shows would do this.

I’ve complained endlessly about the lack of this in shows like The Walking Dead. It’s so much more realistic and immersive when characters in the wild are wild-looking, hair messy, filthy and scarred. I’ve joked that I if ever made a Western or a zombie show, I’d make all the cast and crew go on a multi-day backpacking trip to prepare, just to feel how dirty you feel after living in the open, covered in campfire smoke, none of your things ever really clean. I’ve never seen a show do it so well as American Primeval.

Matt Kennedy/Netflix

I’m a little less enamored of the cinematography, though it has its moments. Director Peter S. Berg and cinematographer Jacques Jouffret rely a bit too heavily on shaky cam and zoomed in motion shots. In moderation, this can add a sense of freneticism to a scene. Too much and it’s quickly tiresome.

I do like the washed-out filters that sap the landscape of its color and life. This helps set the tone: Bleak, desaturated, ghostly; everywhere you step is a makeshift cemetery, just waiting for graves; the veil between worlds a little too thin in this stark place. But I could do with a few more gorgeous establishing shots of snow-swept mountain ranges and wide vistas and fewer dizzying shaky cams. These have their place in the thick of battle, in desperate moments of flight, but it’s an overused technique and one that can almost make a show feel cheaper than it is. At least there’s no slow motion (looking at you Rebel Moon).

The shoot itself took 135 days, most of which was outdoors in extreme weather conditions in New Mexico, interrupted by the Hollywood strikes. “We shot 99% exterior. We were on soundstages for only three days,” Berg told Forbes in an interview last year. “Everyone thought it’d be so nice to go onto a soundstage but we were all in such a feral mental and physical state that we didn’t want to be inside. It felt good for a second and then we just wanted to get back outside and into it.” That feral state certainly translates to the screen.

All told, American Primeval is a bit of a mixed bag but one I recommend nevertheless, though the nature of the show will make it unpalatable for many. It’s raw and sparse and violent and atmospheric and Kitsch and Gilpin and the other leads do a great job bringing their characters to life, but it’s oddly structured and its divided focus never quite pays off in the end. The writing also feels uneven at times, and some of the performances can veer toward melodrama. As a work of cinematic art, however, it’s exactly what I’d hoped it would be: Ambitious, unusual and distinct.

American Primeval is available to stream now on Netflix.

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‘American Primeval’ Review: Netflix’s Violent, Bloody Saga Of The American Frontier Is A Harrowing Watch

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