AMERICAN PRIMEVAL -GOOD AND EVIL

The Mountain Meadow Massacre is center-stage in this brutal and enthralling pioneer docudrama.

- By Henry C. Parke

As played by Taylor Kitsch, below, swinging the rifle, White-born, Shoshone-raised Isaac's existence is an endless fight for life in the unforgiving frontier beyond Fort Bridger.

American Primeval takes no prisoners—especially audience members: a close-up is almost always a tip-off that someone is about to get shot in the face, or scalped, or have their throat slit. Netflix's notice at the beginning warns not generally of violence, but specifically of "gore." Not that one could tell this story well without spilling blood. It's set in 1857, against the background of the Utah War, specifically the Mountain Meadows Massacre, in which a Mormon army, disguised as Indians, slaughtered 120 members of a wagon train.

Betty Gilpin plays Sara, who has taken her young son Devin (Preston Mota) into this hellish vision of Zion, to reunite with his father at Crooks Spring. Their first guide gets them as far as Fort Bridger before he is murdered, and their second guide, James Beckwourth (a great historical figure who is often mentioned but never appears), has stood Sara up for being many days late. Jim Bridger (Shea Whigham) tries to help by hooking her up with Isaac Reed (Taylor Kitsch), a Shoshone-raised White man, but he refuses to take them. But he’s so concerned that the beyond-her-depth Sara will get her son killed, that he tails them when she joins a wagon train, and is there to rescue them when the slaughter begins. But their problems are only beginning, and Isaac has no inkling that Sara is fleeing bounty hunters.

The six-hour, six-episode