Director: Johannes Roberts
Writers: Johannes Roberts and Ernest Riera
Stars: Johnny Sequoyah, Jessica Alexander, Troy Kotsur
Synopsis: Home from college, Lucy reunites with family including pet chimp Ben. Ben contracts rabies during a pool party and turns aggressive. Lucy and friends barricade in pool, devising ways to survive the vicious chimp.
Many are aware that, in many cases, January is a month of slim pickings when it comes to horror film releases. In quite a few cases, however, there can be quite the surprise found amidst the dump, and while Primate isn’t exactly a refreshing change of pace from some genre trappings its contemporaries tend to fall into, the film is a very sturdy case of ‘getting the job done.’ Director Johannes Roberts clearly wants to lean into a cheeky B-movie nature that isn’t quite as present in his past features. The film mostly works when it leans into the campy and knowing nature of what is essentially a creature feature, and less so when it tries to take itself seriously. However, Roberts is surprisingly able to handle scenes of hair-raising suspense and loony absurdity quite effectively. One could wish that Primate did a bit better job refining its tonal inflections to make it a more memorable experience overall, but the film does what it says on the tin: a chimpanzee brutally kills some annoying teenagers gloriously, and it’s hard not to be satisfied.
The film’s setup is as simple as they come, following Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) and her friends Hannah (Jess Alexander) and Kate (Victoria Wayant) as they travel back to Lucy’s home of Hawaii for vacation. Lucy has been away from home for a while due to her college studies, now feeling a bit adrift with her father, who is a famed author, Adam (Troy Kotsur), and her sister Erin (Gia Hunter). While Lucy has been away, Erin has only been kept company by their only family pet, Ben the chimpanzee, who only seems to gain more knowledge by the day. It seems like everyone is all set for a day of fun until a mysterious bite on Ben’s arm is discovered, leading to what seems virtually impossible in Hawaii: Ben contracting rabies. The chimp’s aggression slowly grows throughout the night after Adam leaves to sign more of his best-selling books, leading to a standoff for survival for these teenagers against a monkey gone wild.
The bloody chaos of Primate’s premise is, of course, where most of the fun will be found, but Roberts’ ingenuity amidst the film’s probable low budget is also admirable. In the film, Ben can’t swim, so a large portion of the film’s runtime takes place within the one location of Lucy’s huge home and the pool that sits at the back of it. It’s impressive just how much creativity is brought out of crafting scenes where the teens must sneak and avoid loud noises amidst Ben’s peril, and while yes, the film is incredibly silly, it makes use of its limited resources and can save the bloody and pulpy kills for its main course, which are a delight for any horror fan to witness.
While the tonal balances of the Primate create small issues that mostly persist in the film’s introductory scenes, the inherent silliness of the film is also used in clever ways. There’s almost a cat-and-mouse-like playfulness to many scenes of the chimp seeming to outwit many of the attempts from the teenagers to escape, in particular, the scene of Ben using car keys to open a car to brutally bash another victim is a fun sequence. What’s also present here that tends to be more of a hindrance in other horror films is the implementation of annoying characters. The film knows its audience wants to see those characters go out in the most ridiculous of ways, and Ben delivers on some insane carnage at multiple points.
What keeps Primate from being better is its implementation of way too many instances of taking itself way too seriously within this narrative. Obviously, yes, there needs to be at least a bit of a foundation within the characters we meet before we get to what we paid to see, but there’s a lot more expository dumps about the familial troubles of the main trio of Lucy, Erin, and Adam than I would like. It doesn’t help that it’s done through the most boring dialogue imaginable, and sometimes you’ll be wondering, “where’s the killer chimp in this killer chimp movie?” but luckily, it never ends up a deal breaker for the film on the whole.
Primate isn’t going to blow horror fans’ minds or stick out as one of the more memorable genre pictures of the year, but it’s a good example of doing a solid job at providing what was advertised: a chimpanzee essentially acting as Michael Myers and killing teenagers one by one. It has its occasional shortcomings and at times struggles to balance its silly and serious moments, but the film’s synth-heavy score and bloody mayhem provide a fun way to kill 80 or so minutes, even though that’s about all the film has to offer.
