Primate (now streaming on VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video) doesn’t eff around: Ape gets rabies, starts murdering. High concept, schmigh concept. Subtext, schmubtext. Plot, schmot. Director Johannes Roberts knows what he’s doing with a stripped-down horror-thriller, too, having helmed 47 Meters Down – shark stalks two women stranded underwater – which happens to be a movie that stands as one of the better shark films of the new millennium, perhaps improbably. Whether Primate does the same for chimp-based horror remains to be seen, but it’s pretty impressive how entertainingly pointless it is.
The Gist: Hats off to a film that uses an opening title card to explain one measly plot point that occurs at the beginning of the second act: One of the symptoms of rabies is hydrophobia, the fear of water. And it’s true – Wikipedia sez so. Apparently, the infected experience throat spasms that make drinking water impossible. To delve further into this plot point, it’s also not a totally made-up movie thing that chimps can’t swim – their bodies are dense to the point that they’re much more adept at sinking. These are two true facts. Who says movies don’t teach us anything?
Now let’s work our way toward that plot point. Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) is a moron, but that isn’t prevalent quite yet. Right now, she’s just your typical college student going home for the summer. In tow is her bestie Kate (Victoria Wyant), and Kate’s brother Nick (Benjamin Cheng). Also Hannah (Jessica Alexander), who Lucy didn’t invite because they don’t really get along, but here she is anyway, at Kate’s behest, and also at the movie’s behest, since it needs kills, and a movie can’t have kills without grossly underdeveloped characters who can be killed. Lucy’s sister Erin (Gia Hunter) doesn’t technically exist in the to-be-killed bucket because she’s like 14 and therefore too young to be murdered in a creature-feature animals-attack slasher movie. Them’s the rules.
Lucy lives in Hawaii, in a giant house with massive windows, atop an oceanside cliff with an infinity pool right at the cusp of the dropoff, and it’s far enough away from civilization that one might be prompted to wonder how long it would take for authorities to get there should an emergency arise. Note, this isn’t the type of thing we think about while watching comedies. Anyway, this home is affordable because Lucy’s dad Adam (Troy Kotsur, Oscar winner for CODA) is a famous deaf author who writes bestselling thrillers with the word “silent” in the titles. We know this because large framed images of the book covers hang throughout the house, and one can’t help but wonder if the characters in Office Space decorated their homes with large framed images of TPS reports.
More to the point, Lucy’s late mother was a linguist who studied chimpanzee communication, so the family adopted Ben (Miguel Torres Umba, wearing an animatronic suit), who’s stuck in the nether-zone of not quite being a pet but also not being a sibling, so I hope he has a good shrink. Ben loves stuffies and that’s why Lucy brings home a new teddy for him to snuggle. Cute little Ben! Soooooo adorbs! He communicates basic English phrases with a tablet computer and shakes hands with new friends. Smart little guy. Quite the charmer. But what if he’s bitten by a rabid mongoose? Not so cute or charming anymore, as it turns out. Wild eyes, foamy drool, murderous impulses, all that. Good thing there’s a pool for everyone to hang out in, since Ben has rabies-induced hydrophobia, and is a chimp and therefore can’t swim. Every plot needs its loopholes, y’know.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? The opening of Nope, and the old Planet of the Apes movies where people wore ape suits. But I’m reminded of Cujo more than anything.
Performance Worth Watching: Umba gives the kind of performance that deserves greater recognition for a role demanding a high degree of technical skill and significant emphasis on body language to communicate the film’s core emotion: CHIMP SCARY.
Our Take: Inevitably, Primate reaches the point where the human characters cross the Unintelligence Rubicon and our allegiance shifts to the chimp. Which is a long way of saying we start rooting for Ben to kill the shit out of these bananabrained dingleberries, and when the subtext of the story reveals itself to be nothing more than a rumination on the value of common sense in survival situations. The credulity-straining conceit that rabies inspires the chimp to not only become Jason Voorhees, but a top-notch psychological terrorist who knows the functions of various buttons on the keyfob of a Jeep Cherokee? That doesn’t bother me as much as the precipitous Niagara-esque plummeting of human intelligence quotients, which struck me as true bone-chilling horror.
Roberts, co-writing with Ernest Riara, shows minimal interest in lecturing us about the morality of keeping a majestic simian as a family pet, although you’re allowed to interpret the brutal, gruesomely gory punishment these people endure as such, of course. Primate has no greater goal in mind than to craft a taut, visually-driven freakoutfest consisting of suspenseful sequences held together by contrivances. The characters are too flimsy to carry any thematic weight, especially the two douchebros who turn up in the third act for no other reason than to give Ben someone new, and icky of personality, to murder.
I admired Roberts’ use of practical effects – not exclusively, but mostly – to deliver memorable moments of extreme brutality, although I don’t necessarily feel good about that; occasionally, you can’t help but chuckle when Ben relentlessly effs with his victims. Just like Roberts does to us, when he makes us believe the ape is following the guy up the stairs when it’s really just the camera following the guy up the stairs. Stop making assumptions about POV, bro! (Hey, at least there are no cheapo jump scares here.) The film exists for moments like this, and no other reason. So take it or leave it, but if you take it, leave your brain at the door.
Our Call: More watchable than it probably deserves to be, Primate is a B-plus movie in a B-minus subgenre. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
