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Primeval and Forsaken

A film review of frontier brutality, archery, and the quiet horror of survival.

There’s something primal about the way American Primeval treats archery—something that strips it of romance, of the quiet elegance we might have once attributed to it in stories of old. The bow here is not a weapon of honour, of skill honed under patient tutelage; it is a tool of survival, wielded with a desperation that makes your stomach turn. The arrows don’t just fly; they shriek, slicing through the air with a hunger, a need. They come from nowhere, from everywhere. They remind you that death in this world is not a clean thing; it’s messy, brutal, and silent until it isn’t.

Compare this film with Lonesome Dove, where the bow, when it does appear, represents something very much like of a relic of the past, contrasting with the crude effectiveness of rifles. There, archery represented an epiphany, a whisper of something that belongs to the old world, a world that is already fading away. It was almost poetic in its rarity, something to be admired rather than feared. The men of Lonesome Dove looked upon it with the same regard they had for the Comanches themselves—a fading threat, a dying breed. But American Primeval shatters that illusion. Here, the bow is no mere artifact; it is the only thing that stands between survival and oblivion. It hums with urgency, with necessity.

There’s a scene that lingers with me—the one where the arrows come raining down from the tree line, silent until they strike. The settlers, huddled, their muskets too slow, too cumbersome, trying to answer in kind but finding their hands trembling, their bodies sluggish with fear. And those archers? They’re ghosts, shadows slipping between the trees, precise, merciless. There’s something terrifying in the cold efficiency of it, the way the arrows strike true, finding throats, eyes, hearts, all before a single shot is fired in return. It’s in those moments that you realize just how archaic the bow might seem—until it isn’t. Until it’s the only thing that matters.

And yet, when I think of Lonesome Dove, there’s a different kind of weight to it. Think of that scene—Call, rifle in hand, watching an old Comanche draw his bow with slow deliberation. There’s no rush to it, no frenzy. It’s almost a gesture of respect, a mutual understanding of what’s coming. Call waits, his trigger finger light but certain. The Comanche pulls back, his gaze steady, as if in that moment they both understand that this isn’t about survival any more, but something deeper—something that neither of them can name. And then the shot, the release, and silence follows. That was archery in Lonesome Dove—a reflection of something lost, something slipping through time’s fingers.

But there’s no such reflection in American Primeval. There is only the need to survive. To kill before you are killed. And isn’t that what makes this series so terrifying? It leaves no room for contemplation, no space for nostalgia. It forces you to reckon with what survival really looks like—without the poetry we might have once clothed it in.

And what of the people caught in the crossfire of these arrows? In Lonesome Dove the men bore their burdens with ineffable dignity, wearing their grief like an old coat, heavy but familiar. Gus and Call, despite all their coarseness, still nurtured something tender within them – some longing, a hope, however misguided but always present. Whereas the men of American Primeval are harsh, almost devoid of any humanity, yielding to their instincts and the primal reflexes that govern over them. There’s no longing here, no tender dreams of Texas or Montana. There’s only the next kill, the next breath. And it gnaws at them, this endless cycle of violence. It eats them from the inside out, leaving nothing but hollow shells where men should be.

As for women, in Lonesome Dove, by contrast, the vision of a feminine figure of those years was an entirely different thing—a dream, a distant promise of something softer, gentler. Clara, with her quiet strength, persisted like a beacon of what could be, even if it was never really within her grasp. Meanwhile, in American Primaeval, women are not quite the same kind. They are the ones who endure, who pick up the pieces and forge something new from the ruins. There’s no waiting, no hoping. They take up bows themselves, knives, whatever they can, and they do what needs to be done. And in that, they are more terrifying than any man on the frontier, because they do not kill for glory, or pride, or even vengeance. They kill because there is no other choice.

And you, dear reader, what do you make of it? Do you still hold faith in the romantic vision of the frontier, the poetry of the West? Can you still vision it in the flick of an arrow point, with the slow pull of a bowstring? Or does it all crumble into dust, soke in blood and turn ruin? Lonesome Dove made us believe, at least for a brief, fleeting moment, in a beauty at times to be found even in the rawness of being. And here one would like to mark a dot, but the cursed realism of American Primeval urges us to look again, to let go of illusions, and to face what has always lurked underneath. And perhaps (although this is not my view of the world) it’s what makes it so tempting and beholding.

So please do tell me – when you hear the whisper of an arrow in the dark, do you still regard it as the siren call of the past? Or, like those settlers, do you curl up and pray that it doesn’t find you?

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This article is part of our free content space, where everyone can find something interesting for themselves. If you like what you read and want to support us, please consider purchasing an online membership.