An uneven chimp-carnage horror with aspirations of Donkey Kong–level fun
Considering director Johannes Roberts’ previous effort was the thoroughly detestable film Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, expectations for Primate were understandably low. While it offers a few dashes of tension, terror, and chimp-chilling horror, the film ultimately settles into a middling slasher, content to fluff around in tawdry B-movie thrills and questionable execution. The premise may appeal to fans of simple animal horror—a tropical homecoming gone awry when a rabies-infected chimpanzee goes on a rampage—but the film quickly wanes in its ability to sustain suspense, dropping it like a half-peeled banana.
Primate follows a narrative so small it could fit on a postcard summarising the director’s statement. Returning home to Hawaii, college student Lucy Pinborough (Johnny Sequoyah) arrives at the airport with best friend Kate (Victoria Wyant), and frenemy Hannah (Jessica Alexander). Nick (Benjamin Cheng), Kate’s brother, greets them. Lucy’s father, Adam (Troy Kotsur), a deaf, successful novelist, and her lamenting sister, Erin (Gia Hunter) await at a remote, lavish property built into a cliff. Also waiting for Lucy at home is Ben, the intelligent and communicative Pinborough-adopted chimpanzee.
Full of cliched college-student angst, bratty antics, and a drunken call to some over-the-top college boys they met on the plane, the group parties by the outdoor infinity pool while Adam heads off to a book signing. That night, when Ben begins acting strangely in his enclosure, a veterinarian attempts to calm him—only to have his face torn off (shown initially in the in-media-res opening). With Ben now rabid and dangerously aggressive, the five youngsters must confront the homicidal primate alone with no help coming. The rest is, unfortunately, fairly self-explanatory. Riddled with plot armour, thin characterisation, and boneheaded decisions, the movie chews up its generic cast, tossing hair, skin, and bone like a chimp with a chew toy.
What’s even sillier is that the central conceit could have worked without the added condition of hydrophobia, which makes almost no sense in terms of how the virus supposedly reached Hawaii. The film tells us that a dead mongoose in Ben’s enclosure is the culprit—a catalyst that requires a near-complete suspension of disbelief. Male chimpanzees are among the most aggression-prone primates; in a better script, a less contrived and illogical escalation could have triggered Ben’s violent outbreak naturally, whether through ecological or social pressures (remember Gordy from Jordan Peele’s Nope?).
The main appeal of the film comes in the back half, when the rabid primate goes about his bloodthirsty business. Movement and mime artist Miguel Torres Umba inhabits an animal suit for most of the film as Ben, bringing both humour and restless physicality to the chimpanzee. Troy Kotsur’s performance as Adam adds moments of genuine tension, his character’s deafness creating a perilous scenario. The sound design places us squarely in his point of view during a particularly butt-clenching encounter, while elsewhere ASL is used accurately and naturally, adding another layer of authenticity to the suspense.
Whether it’s the bizarre choice of leaving all the lights off, the film’s budget constraints, or just straight-up sloppy work from cinematographer Stephen Murphy, almost every moment of terror is hampered by murky, dim lighting. Too many scenes are so dark that the visual impact suffers, especially in a film mostly confined to a single location. Thankfully, Adrian Johnston’s score injects a bit of electric pep into the gory, drawn-out shenanigans.
There are flashes of fun in Primate, but the chest beats for something with a little less creative monkey business. As a 90-minute creature feature, it’s mostly harmless, yet poor lighting, a barely-there plot, and painfully dumb characters mean it shines in isolated moments rather than delivering a full buffet of animal-wrought carnage. Still, if your main goal is watching a rabid chimp rip tendons with reckless abandon, this scratches that primal itch.
