Primate is the latest monkey horror film to grace movie screens, joining other fine examples of the genre like Bedtime for Bonzo (1951) and Ed (1996).
The plot of Primate is thus:
A tropical vacation goes awry when Ben, a family’s adopted chimpanzee, is bitten by a rabid animal and suddenly becomes violent.
According to the ads you may have seen on TV where hidden cameras record audiences, many folks will jump out of their seats, and a good time will be had by all.
Grace Randolph, a YouTube movie reviewer, also created a whole new thing to be outraged about because she walked out of Primate. Some folks felt that betrays the sacred trust of movie critics. Apparently, shilling is okay, though…
Some spoilers will happen because it doesn’t really matter.
Primate
Johannes Roberts wrote and directed Primate. Roberts is the man who brought us the 47 Meters Down movies. With Primate, Roberts once again makes a movie. It lights up cinema screens with moving images, has credits — the whole shebang.
That seems to be as far as Roberts’ ambition went, however. Not much exists with Primate. The first thirty minutes is the victims arriving at an isolated home in the Hawaiian mountains. The next 45 minutes are those characters entering and exiting the swimming pool as they take brief forays into the house for cellphones. The final 15 minutes is kill-the-monkey.
Meanwhile, the rabid chimpanzee flits around the edges of the scenes until it is time for him to screech and flail like a liberal white woman confronted by logic.
Roberts almost introduces a neat element. The owner of the house is deaf, and his daughters know sign language. Surely, that will lead to some sort of payoff or chilling communication with a rabid chip to understand what is going on with him, emotionally, as he goes rabid.
Nope. It is hardly used at all. The best use of it is when the deaf owner returns home and blithely walks through the mayhem happening around him…for about thirty seconds.
Lazy is the best way to describe Primate. It even goes so far as to copy the key-fob gag from Scream note-for-note. No real excuse for that.
Primate Mary Keep On rolling
If one was of a more positive bent, they could perhaps describe Primate as lean and mean rather than lazy. Yet, these kinds of films still owe the audience at least a bit of spirit. I can’t blame Randolph for walking out. I could have walked out after thirty minutes and predicted the rest of the film with 95-percent accuracy.
Even this is forgivable, however. The same could be said for a lot of movies. Formula is formula for a reason. Because it works. It is up to the movie to compel you to stick around anyway. Primate is not that compelling.
Even the chimpanzee attack element in Nope showed more imagination. A chimp going nuts on a television show is a capital idea. Primate is merely a crazy chimp in a house with cannon-fodder victims. Even the concept of a dangerous-animal-in-a-house can work. See Venom. But you know why that worked? Because you had a cast: Klaus Kinski, Oliver Reed, Sterling Hayden and more. The movie used actual adults. Primate has an extremely bland cast with nothing to work with.
Primate School
Johnny Sequoyah (Dexter: New Blood) plays the main character. She is a twenty-something college student who looks around pensively. But she is strong.
Sequoyah is supported by Jessica Alexander (Get Even) and Victoria Wyant. They are twenty-something college students who look around pensively. But they are strong.
Alexander was supposed to be the mean girl of the group, but she ends up being the most likeable simply because she opined, “Monkey sick. We should shoot it.”
Yes, that is exactly what you should do when faced with a rabid animal with the muscle density of concrete that could pull your lips off through your rectum. Alas, the other girls felt that was too mean. Liberal white woman strikes again…
Gia Hunter portrays Sequoyah’s sister. She is a high school student on the verge of being a twenty-something college student who looks around pensively. But she is strong.
Troy Kotsur (The Number 23) is the deaf homeowner. He leaves the house to go to a book signing. Then he comes back to the house.
Some other male actors show up to portray twenty-something college students who look around hornily. They probably have names. They are weak.
Miguel Torres Umba plays Ben. Apparently, the chimp suit was practical. I am guessing the face was probably augmented by CGI, however. It was hard to tell because they kept the look of the film deliberately dark. As for Umba’s performance, it is definitely there, onscreen.
Primate Position
One thing in its favor is that Primate makes use of its R-rating, mostly. It has some gore, but the gore has an uncanny valley aspect to it. You can’t put your finger on it, but you know something is off. For example, Ben pulls the jaw off a character laying in bed. The character’s head remains flat on the pillow, even as Ben is literally pulling their face in half.
In reality, if you even gently tug a person’s nose, their head will come off the pillow.
On the flipside, despite having an R-rating and a cast of females, Primate contains not one obligatory topless scene. I personally don’t care because I’m mature, but it seemed a strange omission. It’s like Hollywood doesn’t even know its recipes anymore and is just throwing stuff at the screen hoping something sticks.
Primate also had the sense to keep its budget down. It is a low $20 million film. Truth be told, that still seems extreme, though. Primate has no A-listers and takes place in a single location (mostly a pool). It seems $10 million should do the job. Roger Corman probably could have done it for $1 million.
“What do we need a monkey costume for? Just sedate one and hook up puppet strings!”
We shouldn’t expect much from January releases. It is known as “dump month” for a reason. In that regard, Primate knew its lane. Give it one star for having a monkey and one star for sort of using its R-rating, plus being short.
(D)OOK(ie)-(d)OOK(ie)!
