- Network: Netflix
- Series Premiere Date: Jan 9, 2025
Critic Reviews
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“American Primeval” is mostly dead on the page. There’s not enough excitement in the ideas, and there’s not enough thought in the storytelling. What’s left is the sometimes orgiastic brutality — no different from the violence in the kind of low-rent entertainment “American Primeval” wants to separate itself from — and the manifold formulas of the western.
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Berg wants people to think this his gory, raw approach is true to history, when in fact it’s a manipulative tale of survival, as tasteless as it is hollow.
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Berg’s technical flair can’t elevate the material, which is so thin it leaves even a cast this talented more than a bit adrift.
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As disposable entertainment, it’s mediocre; as history, it’s poorly researched white savior propaganda cosplaying as representation. Ugly inside and out and only passably engaging due to the valiant efforts of the cast, “American Primeval” misses its mark and then some and would serve the world best by slumping off on a ride towards the sunset, never to return.