A tidy safari that delivers all the African animals and lion attacks one could want.

I’ll start by saying I really liked this, but no-one else I went with enjoyed it nearly as much.  But I really love a good animal attack film, one that sets up a plausible situation where man has to suffer at the jaws of nature.  Crawl (2019) and Rogue (2007) spring to mind.  There’s the never-ending parade of shark movies, best recently being The Shallows (2016).  But I don’t feel we’ve had a really good lion attack film since Ghost & the Darkness (1996), although I will have to catch up Prey (2007).

Anyway, animals attack.  We like to think of ourselves as top of the food chain, but big animals can kill you.  If you’re in their territory, you’re at their whims.  Whilst it’s possible to generalise about their placid natures, there’s also always that chance any individual animal that will go super crazy for whatever reason; brain parasites, personal vendetta, learned behaviour…  Most ring-tailed possums might be cute and lovely, but once in a while one will learn to bite your toes or fingers to get food.  Lions just bite you because you are the food.  Or, as seems to be a bit of lion-movie theme, because they’re possessed by the devil.

This film is delightfully tidy and short at only 1hr 33mins – a breath of fresh air in these overblown times.  And I didn’t feel ripped off – there is so much edge of the seat action in the run time that it’s very satisfying.  The build up is a little slow, sets the scene of a troubled family… then RAAAOWWWR!  The killer lion is on their case and it’s pretty much 100% fight and flight for your lives for the rest of the film.  There are jump-scares, there’s tension, there’s a sense of claustrophobia and agoraphobia combined, and there are bloody injuries.  There’s quite a bit of gore to see, or look away from if it makes you squeamish.

As an animal nerd I was satisfied to see a lot of other animals show up in this.  There is great African scenery – they really filmed there and it looks doco worthy.  And to really feel the human-as-prey vibe at multiple points throughout.  I thought perhaps the witchcraft/devil angle could be explored a bit more as it seemed they were setting a scene for it, but I guess it didn’t matter in the end.  Everyone has a motivation, including all the lions, and there’s nice and tidy foreshadowing and wrap ups.

Perhaps most happily, the CGI lion does okay.  Any animal film is going to live or die on the strength of the ability to make this look real, and I think the lions worked.  Not perfect, but far better than some recent CGI animals.  They used a stuntman in a suit and lioned it up later.  Apparently the lion-guy kept giving Idris the giggles.

If you dig that animal attack sense of terror then this might work for you.

J* gives it 4 stars.