‘American Primeval’: Netflix’s Ultra-Violent New Western Series Will Turn Your Stomach

The 19th-century American West of American Primeval is a land of unyielding brutality, though nothing about this six-part Netflix series, premiering Jan. 9, is as violent as Peter Berg’s belligerently over-the-top direction.

Assaulting viewers with aesthetic devices that land with the unpleasant thud of a mortar shell—including what feels like a record-setting number of canted-angle compositions—the filmmaker goes hog-wild gussying up a tale that begins in conventional style and concludes with a bombardment of clichés. You’ve seen this tale many times before, albeit rarely with this much excessive embellishment—not to mention distaste for the Church of Latter-Day Saints.

In the Utah Territory circa 1857, everyone is out to get a slice of the nascent nation’s bountiful pie, and they all believe that the best means of doing so is through slaughter. The U.S. Army is determined to seize control of the region, but in its way are two factions that also lay claim to the area: the indigenous Native Americans, in particular the Shoshone tribe, and the Mormon Militia, which is determined to establish a homeland for its people at the behest of leader Brigham Young (Kim Coates).

It’s into this de facto battleground that Sara (Betty Gilpin) enters with her young son Devin (Preston Mota), arriving at Fort Bridger with the aid of a shady guide. Sara’s destination is the town of Crooks Spring, where she plans to reunite with her husband. Yet as she learns at the fort, which is owned and operated by Jim Bridger (Shea Whigham, stealing every scene he’s in), nothing comes easy in these parts, and it’s not long before she finds herself in need of new accompaniment to the next stop on her journey.

Everything is dusty, muddy, and rugged in American Primeval, as well as cockeyed, since Berg can’t stop from tilting his camera, regardless of whether the material warrants it. Those with motion sickness or vertigo are advised to avoid the series, and that additionally goes for anyone with a squeamish stomach.

Berg and creator/writer Mark L. Smith (The Revenant, Twisters) go heavy on the nastiness, be it point-blank executions, slit throats, hangings, head-bashings, and gruesome scalpings, the last of which occurs to Mormon true-believer Jacob Pratt (Dane DeHaan) during a premiere-episode look-at-me massacre. This sorry fate ends Jacob’s quest to join up with Young and his acolytes. Moreover, it separates him from spouse Abish (Saura Lightfoot Leon), who was less than thrilled about her forthcoming subservient life as a wife and mother, and who winds up the captive of rebel Shoshone warrior Red Feather (Derek Hinkey) because, in one of many cornily preposterous twists, he admires her toughness.

Sara and Devin similarly escape this catastrophic attack, which was perpetrated by Mormon Militia baddie James Wolsey (Joe Tippett) and his cronies, all of whom wore masks to hide their identity and partnered with local Paiute scoundrels to deflect blame away from the Church of Latter-Day Saints.

Knowing that the Mormons would be eradicated by the US Army if their culpability for this carnage was exposed, Wolsey strives to eliminate any surviving witnesses. Unfortunately for him, most of them are scattered to the wind, with Abish the prisoner of Red Feather and Sara and Devin in the care of Isaac (Taylor Kitsch), a scruffy recluse with Native American ties who’s convinced by Bridger to help them get to where they’re going.

Isaac is a gruff, tortured soul whose few words are seldom kind, and his initially contentious rapport with Sara is such that they’re obviously destined to fall in love. Before that happens, however, Isaac has to put up with Sara behaving monumentally stupidly on two separate occasions, both of which jeopardize her and Devin’s safety and are emblematic of American Primeval’s habit of pushing the narrative forward via illogical character conduct.

Dim-bulb behavior is the order of the day, but as frustrating as that is, it’s less vexing than the predictability of every plot strand. There’s a difference between paying inventive homage to archetypal figures and situations and duly rehashing them, and too often, the latter proves to be the case as Sara endeavors to reach Crooks Springs, Abish acclimates to Shoshone captivity, Wolsey and his Mormon cohorts attempt to cover up their misdeeds and seize control of Utah, and Jacob searches for Abish.

Jacob eventually joins forces with Virgil Cutter (Jai Courtney), who learns that Sara is wanted for murder in Philadelphia and thus covets the bounty on her head. Unsurprisingly, there’s a good reason for Sara doing what she did, just as Isaac’s torment has to do with the loss of his own family—thereby making him the perfect guy to serve as Sara and Devin’s surrogate husband/father.

American Primeval isn’t subtle about any of this, and worse, its early portrayal of its disparate characters as equally vicious doesn’t hold; by the midway point, some are revealed to be noble (Red Feather, Isaac, Sara) and others are damned as the most awful sort of villains (all Mormons save for Abish). In this respect as well, the proceedings feign complexity and novelty while falling back on the hoariest possible depictions, in the process neutering any sense of discovery or excitement.

Kitsch glowers and kills with intensity, Gilpin complains and grimaces dully, and Leon scowls monotonously, turning much of American Primeval one-note. Its more colorful performances come courtesy of Courtney (matter-of-fact grim), DeHaan (madly zealous), and Whigham (cynically self-interested and fearless), yet they’re not given enough chances to enliven this gloomy venture and are more or less cast aside during its closing passages in favor of the leads’ hackneyed triumphs, failures, and honorable sacrifices.

Whigham in particular is such a delight that it’s almost criminal he’s not the star of the entire show—a fact that’s underscored by his late confrontations with Young over the future of his fort and, by extension, the vast, untouched territory in which it exists.

American Primeval isn’t a disaster so much as a wasted opportunity, less because it has something interesting to say about Manifest Destiny, Mormonism, or human nature (it doesn’t) than because its roster is stacked with capable actors it infrequently utilizes properly. Berg and Smith have plenty of talent on hand to make something gripping and unique, but the best they come up with is passably watchable slop.