'American Primeval' review: Brutal Western makes 'Game of Thrones' look tame

Hell, apparently, is Utah in 1857.

At least that's the way it looks in "American Primeval," Netflix's new Western, for which "brutal" isn't a strong enough adjective. It's savage and primal and bloody and cold and ruthless. It is all the worst parts of life − greed, tribalism, wanton violence, sexual depravity, deception, racism and ambition − mixed up in a soup of despair. The American melting pot this is not.

"Primeval" (now streaming, ★★½ out of four) is thus aptly named. Created by Pete Berg ("Friday Night Lights") and written by Mark L. Smith, whose "The Revenant" is the best analog for the series, this is not the Wild West of spaghetti Westerns or even serious dramas like HBO's "Deadwood." This version of the West is all gray skies, dirty snow and bearded men caked in mud and blood. It is often fascinating, sometimes riveting but more often gratuitous and dull, with a level of barbarity that might make even the worst "Game of Thrones" villains blush. It is not entertainment to escape into but a story you may want to escape from. If you can stomach the gore, there are good actors and a deep historical lesson about the origin of soul of the country. But if "The Walking Dead" made you nauseous, please skip.

"Primeval" focuses primarily on Sara Rowell (Betty Gilpin, "GLOW"), an East coast mother traveling west with her young son who becomes overwhelmed at the lawlessness and disorganization of the country once she gets past the end of the railroad tracks. She's desperate to reach her husband, even though she lost her travel companions, and eventually finds Isaac (Taylor Kistch), who looks like Davy Crockett viewed through a prestige-TV darkness filter. A wild man with ties to a local Shoshone Nation tribe, he reluctantly joins Sara and her son, Devin (Preston Mota), on a journey west through Utah as a runaway Shoshone girl, Two Moons (Shawnee Pourier), tags along.

The unlikely quartet is caught up in the middle of a undeclared war between Indigenous nations, the U.S. government, pioneers heading west and the newly powerful Mormon church, its Nauvoo militia and leader Brigham Young (Kim Coates). Mormon brother and pioneer Jacob Pratt (Dane DeHaan) survives a grossly horrific clash between these elements and sets out on a semi-deranged mission to find his missing wife, Abish (Saura Lightfoot-Leon). Meanwhile, less savory characters like Virgil Cutter (Jai Courtney) are after Sara and her son because of her past.

It's a lot of plot threads for one story, and "Primeval" struggles to balance them, particularly when it comes to Cutter's bounty-hunter storyline (if you can recognize Courtney in the beard and the mud, you should win a prize). The episodes are ponderous and feel overlong, almost a cliché these days when it comes to expensive-looking and serious streaming TV fare. Its woman-on-the-run story is weak at times, not quite engaging enough to get through the constant death and destruction.

And yes, depending on your tolerance level, the series' near-revelry in the macabre could be off-putting or even offensive. Rape, incest, dead children, scalping − there is no act of violence the show is shy of showing on camera. It has a point to make, certainly, that its story takes place among the most evil and feral of humans. But it could have made that point without venturing into so much gratuitous bloodshed.

But it is excellently cast; you might have the feeling Kitsch has been twiddling his thumbs his entire career waiting to play a stoic frontiersman. Gilpin, underrated in many projects, is a knockout, balancing most of the show on her character's twittering and anxious shoulders. And nobody does unhinged quite as well as DeHaan; the image of his nearly scalped face with blood and crazy eyes will stick with you long after you turn off the TV.

The Western can be a deeply romantic genre with white hats and black hats, dusty streets and beautiful sunsets. Great films and TV series have broken with our rose-colored expectations of the American frontier, "The Revenant" chief among them.

"Primeval" achieves its shocking goal and then some, but it doesn't quite have a story that's engrossing enough past its desire to make you clutch your pearls.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'American Primeval' review: Western makes 'Game of Thrones' feel tame