Netflix Western American Primeval Squanders A Fascinating Historical Moment

Hollywood and the TV industry have long been obsessed with carrying on the myth of the Old American West, from pulpy adventures rife with six-shooters, more self-serious meditations on the United States’ bloodstained history, and everything in between. American Primeval, Netflix’s newest limited series, steps into this long line of Westerns, attempting to ground us in the unsavory details of the mostly-forgotten Utah War, an 1857 conflict between the United States government and Mormon settlers that went to some grim places. But despite a novel historical backdrop and some impressive production value, this mini-series is undone by thin characters, predictable plotlines, and an inability to thoughtfully engage with its abundant violence. It has plenty of shock value but little else, and had me wishing I could ride off into the sunset long before the credits rolled.

The story centers on two groups trying to make their way west during a time of great political tension between the US government and Utah’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We primarily follow Sara Holloway (Betty Gilpin) and her son Devin (Preston Mota), who are on a journey to reunite with Sara’s estranged husband. Unfortunately for them, the path there is made up of hazardous winter terrain and lots of people who want to kill each other. And then there’s Abish (Saura Lightfoot-Leon) and Jacob Pratt (Dane DeHaan), two recently hitched Mormon settlers headed to the LDS settlement in Utah, whose relationship seems to be on thin ice. Before long, both parties are embroiled in conspiracies and manhunts related to the Mountain Meadows Massacre, a real-world mass killing perpetrated by Mormon milia members against California-bound settlers, as a whole bunch of people end up six feet under.

If American Primeval has a thesis statement, it’s that the American West was a place of depravity and lawlessness, as reflected in the endless and somewhat exhausting explosions of bloodshed that director Peter Berg (Battleship, Hancock, Lone Survivor) bombards us with. It’s not exactly fresh territory for the genre, but worse than simply being unoriginal, these attempts at human darkness always come across as clumsy and cartoonish rather than compelling and “adult” in the way it’s going for. Yes, there’s no shortage of shootings, stabbings, beatings, child murder, lashings, scalpings, sexual violence, pearly leg bones emerging from shattered limbs, and just about every horrible thing you can imagine. But it all feels more gratuitous than thought-provoking because, despite this focus on brains getting bashed in and throats being slit, the series simply doesn’t have anything unique or revealing to say about violence, instead believing that simply depicting these horrible acts is enough to be convincing.

It also certainly doesn’t help that the series pales in comparison to the movie it’s most directly aping, Iñárritu’s The Revenant, a connection that feels all the more difficult to ignore given that the two projects share a screenwriter in Mark L. Smith. While that film is as subtle in its intentions as a wild bear attack, it feels positively restrained compared to this work, which lacks any sense of slow-build, quietude, or contemplation, instead assaulting us with one shoot-out after the next. It’s a problem best summed up by a showy sequence shot in the first episode that’s directly trying to channel cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s work on The Revenant and his other films like Children of Men but that comes across as garishly over-the-top imitation; with nary an ounce of gravitas or pathos, it’s like a more expensive version of action figures being mashed around. And it also doesn’t help that Berg’s direction frequently feels more distracting than engaging, full of strange, off-kilter camera framings that don’t match the tone of a given scene.