‘Primate’ review: Going bananas

Primate, the slasher about a rabid chimpanzee that turns murderous at a house party, is as stupid as it sounds. Sometimes for better, but not enough.

The great thing about movies is that they vary in complexity. Sometimes you’ll have something that challenges your perceptions or makes you question your own beliefs. Other times, there are movies that introduce you to a whole new culture and enrich your understanding of the world itself. And then there’s Primate; a movie that’s exactly what you think it is and strives to be absolutely nothing else. You can just watch a film about a murderous monkey without having to look closer or think deeper. Not that you’d want to, anyway.

Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) is flying home to Hawaii with her best friend Kate (Victoria Wyant) and promiscuous third wheel Hannah (Jess Alexander). Meeting up with Kate’s brother Nick (Benjamin Cheng) and Lucy’s sister Erin (Gia Hunter), the gang say hi to Lucy’s deaf dad (Troy Kotsur) and Ben (Miguel Torres Umba), a friendly chimpanzee that’s been with the family for years. One night, Ben is bit by a Mongoose and starts acting strange. That strangeness turns out to be rabies, and now Lucy and the gang have to survive the night with Ben out for blood.

One bad banana.

Photo Credit: Paramount Pictures

If the movie wants to be blunt, I might as well be blunt too: Primate is as dumb as a bag of rocks. Even for an 89-minute movie (actually, 83-minute movie before the credits roll), this is an exercise of taking the home invasion thriller to one of its stupidest extremes. The characters are the most routine young partygoers any novice screenwriter can think of: they’re horny, bratty, and braindead whenever the plot needs them to be. There are flashes of character development, but it’s just filler in the first 40 minutes to bide time before Ben goes crazy.

Then when it’s time for monkey madness, there’s not a shred of actual tension or terror on display because you can’t be afraid of a chimp in a t-shirt. Even Child’s Play, with its equally-ridiculous concept of a doll being possessed by a serial killer, knew to use the intensity of Brad Dourif’s voice and a more menacing face to ramp up the terror. No amount of moody lighting or gory kills can make the concept of a once-cuddly monkey murdering people not hilarious. And that’s not even mentioning how Primate can’t decide if Ben is a dumb wild animal or an intelligent monster. One minute Ben can climb light fixtures to rip someone’s hair off from above, the next he’s easily distracted by a clip from Dora the Explorer.

The makings of a monkey.

Photo Credit: Paramount Pictures

Now my bluntness also comes with fairness and in that spirit, Primate is not entirely irredeemable. In fact, the title character is the main thing keeping the movie afloat. Major credit goes to Umba for the physicality he brings while wearing the chimp suit. He gets the ape mannerisms down to a science and fully commits to whatever the movie needs Ben to be. Credit also goes to the VFX team that make Ben’s facial expressions and aggressive movements all the more believable. For what was probably a cheap movie to make, it’s impressive to see ape effects on par with the blockbuster Planet of the Apes reboots.

As stupid as the movie is, at least it knows it…or at least it knows it the more it goes on. Don’t get me wrong, it has plenty of dumb dialogue and preposterous situations. Thankfully, co-writer/director Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down) makes enough smart decisions to make those moments knowingly ridiculous for audience enjoyment. He could’ve just shown Ben throwing someone off a cliff and let the audience assume they were dead, but he knows horror fans want to see that someone fall head-first to be smashed on the cliffs like a tomato. He knows the horror cliche of drunk dude bros getting killed by the slasher, but he sets up said slashing to start dumb, get dumber, border on romantic (not kidding), and then go right back to being hilariously braindead. A dumb horror movie is much more respectable (or at least tolerable) when it’s honest about itself.

The bottom line.

But let’s keep it blunt: Primate is bad. No matter how good the monkey effects are or how much the movie itself winks at the audience, it can’t make up for how dumb and derivative the whole experience is. It’s one thing to rip-off one of the crucial scenes in Jordan Peele’s Nope, but Primate also does itself no favors by cribbing from Halloween, Scream, A Quiet Place, and other tired horror tropes. Worst of all, Primate continues one of the longest running traditions in movie history: crappy movies in January.

Primate is now playing in theaters everywhere. Watch the trailer here.

Images courtesy of Paramount Pictures. Read more articles by Jon Winkler here.

Jon Winkler