Don't expect expect Lance Henriksen to work any major skills on this throw-away title. Putting in a total of 5 minutes on screen for a ridiculous subplot about an anti-scientific conspiracy within the (presumably Roman Catholic) "Church," Hollywood's go-to villain- for-hire phones it in for a paycheck.
And yet the film makers - who clearly missed the 1950 Papal encyclical stating there's no conflict between evolution and RC faith - waste the actors time and our patience on the abundantly absurd idea that finding the missing link - in the Americas, no less - is worth sending a hit-team after anthropologists. And that somehow, this species is still alive, and larger and more powerful than modern humans and (as is obvious to anyone who's taken high school biology), simian predecessors.
But this preposterous back story - which could have been ditched for a perfectly serviceable mutants-on-an-island movie - represents the only original idea here. A boatload of yuppie monster fodder crashes on an island. They're attacked by unseen mutants. You're better off wasting money on The Killer Shrews. At least you won't be annoyed by monsters barking faux Klingon, and all the Predator plagiarism (unseen killers in the trees; infra-red mutant point-of-view; and a protagonist blending in by being covered with muck).
On the plus side, the acting is competent, and the photography is pretty good. The mutant makeup is excellent. And yet, as Steven King notes in one of his essays, better stories never show the monster.
