‘Primate’ Review – This Rabid Monkey Delivers The Creature Feature Goods

It would be easy to dismiss Primate as a typical January dump release that the studio is hoping to forget based solely on its premise. The plot is as barebones as it gets, as it has a young, good-looking cast going against a once friendly chimpanzee who has gone rabid and now has a thirst for ripping off flesh and other forms of gory mayhem. It’s all very silly, BUT director Johannes Roberts, no stranger to humans in peril from animals, thanks to helming 47 Meters Down, gives Primate a surprising amount of tension and suspense. The movie is technically well-made on all fronts and doesn’t waste a minute of its 89-minute runtime. It’s a lean, mean, and highly entertaining creature feature that delivers on all the gory fun that one would expect from a film like this, but it’s very proficient in its execution, which makes this much better than the early January releases that audiences have come to expect.

There is a plot surrounding the rabid monkey scares, but it’s all to set up the many players and give the audience a human element to root for. Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah), a young college student, hasn’t been home to visit since the death of her primatologist mother a year earlier, much to the disdain of her younger sister Erin (Gia Hunter). Lucy wants to cut away at that tension by surprising her sister and best-selling author father, Adam (Troy Kotsur), by returning to their beautiful tropical getaway home in Hawaii. Likely to soften the blow, Lucy has brought friends with her that include Kate (Victoria Wyant) and Hannah (Jessica Alexander), while the former’s brother Nick, an island resident near their home, is also along for Lucy’s quick visit.

There is a fourth member of this family, and that’s their chimpanzee Ben (brought brilliantly to life by movement expert Miguel Torres Umba). He’s highly adorable and intelligent, thanks to their late mother teaching him how to communicate through sign language and a trusty tablet. Ben is all joy when Lucy and her friend arrive, until he’s bitten by a mongoose that was wandering the property. Following the bite, it’s clear that something is very wrong with Ben. With Adam away from the house at a book signing, the young adult cast is left to face off against a rabid animal that sees even those he once loved as a threat that must be eliminated.

Kudos to Roberts, who also co-wrote the script with his 47 Meters Down collaborator Ernest Riera, for quickly getting to what audiences want to see. Enough is provided about the human cast to care about the necessary players, but, at the end of the day, the tension involving Lucy staying away from home for a year isn’t what moviegoers want to see. They want to see what happens when Ben loses all of the humanity this family has trained him to have. The film gives you just enough of Ben as a lovable member of the family to feel a little something once he goes bad, but when he goes after the cast full on, When Animals Attack! style, the entertainment level has truly set in, and you’re all in on Ben’s rabid brand of terror.

Before getting to the blood-letting, perhaps the most surprising thing about Primate is its technical execution. The film could’ve rested on its laurels and just offered up killer monkey fun, but Roberts crafts a creature feature that is aware of its sprawling setting and utilizes it to craft some creative chase and stalk scenes as well as moments of escalating terror and suspense. The home sits on the side of a mountain cliff, and each one of its multistory levels is used to showcase vastness, but also the limits of the area these characters are in. Perhaps the best set piece is the outdoor pool, as it’s established early on that rabid animals can have hydrophobia, which is described as a fear of water but is also a symptom of late-stage rabies that causes they to experience painful throat spasms that make it difficult for them to swallow. Whatever the reason for Ben having to avoid the pool, it becomes a fun monkey and mouse game as the main cast seeks refuge in the pool to escape Ben on numerous occasions, but can’t easily get out to grab things like a cell phone because Ben is stalking the edges just waiting for them to come out. Knowing that it might get boring to keep a lot of the action here, there are moments of high tension when characters attempt escape or when Ben finds a clever way to elevate himself above the water and gives one of the girls a hair-ripping surprise.

While suspense is a bonus, audiences will likely see Primate for its extreme violence and gore, something the film delivers on greatly. There is face and throat ripping, skull crushing, and other creative ways that Ben dispatches his victims, and perhaps the most surprising element of the violence is that even the most likable characters aren’t spared from it. I found myself surprised by which members of the cast were done away with and when. In Primate, no one is necessarily safe, and that was something that was greatly appreciated, as these kinds of films can be largely predictable.

Two technical aspects that deserve their own mention. Umba’s work as Ben, a mix of costume, make-up, and motion capture, is truly unbelievable. Audiences would not be blamed for believing that a real chimpanzee was used in the film, particularly during the early scenes that don’t require the audience to suspend a lot of disbelief, once Ben becomes a viable threat. A lot of Umba’s most impressive work is with his eyes as he makes it painfully real once Ben devolves from a friendly member of the family to something far more deadly. There is a surprising amount of character in his work as he tries to fight a descent into madness that’s inevitable.

Also of note is the intense score provided by Adrian Johnston. It’s an interesting hybrid of musical styles that adds to the level of intensity as the movie moves along. A lot of it is electronic compositions, but it recalls the horror movie scores of the ’80s and offers up a nice little throwback to a film that does have its fair share of throwback sensibilities.

Primate is not high art by any means, and it does have its fair share of silly elements (there are a few side characters that generate laughs, but they feel lifted from an ’80s teen romp). Also, Adam’s subplot at his book signing doesn’t offer up much other than to get him out of the house to eliminate adult help for the young adult cast. Still, Primate satisfies because of what it gets right, and that’s being a creature feature with bite that manages to generate atmospheric chills but also the rabid monkey violence that audiences will be salivating for.

Primate is now playing in theaters nationwide.