What’s It About

A college student and her friends find themselves in a fight for their lives when a rabid chimpanzee goes on a violent rampage.

MOVIESinMO REVIEW

January is typically the month where the worst movies in the year are dumped in theaters, but from time to time, a good one slips through. Director Johannes Roberts’s latest horror movie, “Primate,” is one such rare early-year release that really knows what it wants to be. It is not a movie trying to win awards or make people think deeply. It is simply a creature feature about a rabid chimpanzee tearing the people apart, and honestly, that is all one needs. The plot is extremely simple. Lucy comes back to Hawaii after her first year of college and brings along her friend Kate and a couple of other classmates for what should be a relaxing vacation at her family’s fancy cliffside mansion. Lucy has been avoiding home because her mother died of cancer the year before, and returning home is stirring up all those feelings that she has been hiding from. Her younger sister Erin is clearly resentful of Lucy leaving her alone to deal with their grief, which causes tension before anything even goes wrong. Their dad, Adam, is a successful author who is deaf and is stressed about his latest book release. He goes out for a business meeting, leaving the girls alone at the house. Moreover, there is Ben, the family chimpanzee. Lucy’s mom was a linguistics professor who brought Ben into their house for her research and taught him sign language so that humans and chimps could communicate. After she passed, the family kept Ben around as a way to remember her. He seems nice enough, warmly greeting Lucy when she arrives and playing with the teddy bear she brings for him. However, what no one knows is Ben has been bitten by a rabid mongoose, and it is going to get very bad. Roberts doesn’t delay his audience from watching great bloody, gory scenes of a chimpanzee on a crime spree. The film is smartly opened with a flash-forward showing Ben in full beast mode, giving the audience a glimpse of the violence that is going to happen in the film before it settles into the story. This is a nice touch since after the viewers have known the going of the story, the moments of silence will be loaded with panic. When a local vet comes to check on Ben and opens his cage, the girlgoers’ paradise turns into a nightmare as Ben releases his fury at the house and kills everyone one by one in the most brutal and beastly way. What is really cool about “Primate” is that Roberts avoids treating Ben as some dumb animal and instead, as a slasher villain the likes of Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees. This rabid chimp is not only a killing machine, but he is also very smart, cunning, and cruel. He lays traps for his victims and also plays with them in ways that are really quite unsettling. The single location, mostly confined to the mansion and its cliffside pool, has this oppressive and suffocating feeling that makes one feel trapped and panicked. The kids quite quickly realize that Ben can’t swim, and so they take refuge in the pool, caught between water and a killer ape who is right in front of them. It is the worst pool party ever. One reason the primate is so scary is the amazing work of practical special effects. Miguel Torres Umba is the person inside the animatronic suit that looks amazingly real as a result of the combination of prosthetics, puppetry, and minimal CGI. When Ben rips faces off or tears jaws from crania, you can tell that these were practical effects and not computer-generated images. It is an old-fashioned horror masterpiece that should be highly appreciated. Umba’s performance through his body language and gestures completely sells the character. Ben is actually the most believable character in the entire movie. Roberts shows quite a lot of directorial talent, especially in his ability to build tension. The camerawork and sound design are very well controlled so that the sequences quite clearly depict a predator stalking its prey. At a time when Adam comes back home early after he is told of the rabies outbreak, because Adam is deaf (acted authentically by Oscar winner Troy Kotsur from “CODA”), Roberts almost cuts out the sound to reflect his perspective. It is not a trick; it really does add another dimension to the horror of that moment, which results in the viewer being more fully immersed in Adam’s experience. The movie does not shy away from showing the animal’s suffering. Even though Ben kills people, there are some scenes where you can see that he is in pain. He is sick and afflicted by a disease that is destroying his mind, and at times, Roberts allows the tragedy to show in Ben’s character. It poses a very thought-provoking question: what if slasher villains were simply sick and not evil? The movie does not go very deeply into this idea, but it certainly adds a bit of unexpected weight to the violence. “Primate” falls down with its human characters. Lucy and her friends are so cliché, they are following every horror movie trope known. For example, Hannah is the vain, not-so-nice member of the group, but the film does not explain why Lucy hates her, probably because of jealousy over Nick, Kate’s brother, whom Hannah seems to be interested in. These conflicts and relationships appear to have been hastily put together and are not very developed. Due to the fact Kate and Lucy wear matched heart pendants, they are supposed to be best friends, yet Kate is going to live with Hannah this summer, even though her best friend hates her. None of it makes any sense if you think about it for even two seconds. The movie’s conversations become very awkward at times, and the characters make choices so incredibly dumb that you will want to shout warnings at the screen. In one scene, somebody is seen going off the cliff with a very fake green screen background that looks embarrassingly cheap. Some of the kills, though impressively bloody, sometimes go too far, thus making it seem that Roberts is showing off instead of serving the story. There are many scenes in the film that are repetitive. Ben stalks, Ben attacks, Ben walks away victorious. Rinse and repeat. Nevertheless, the point is: no one went to see “Primate” for the development of characters or themes. People came physically to see a rabid chimp dismember humans, and the movie met the viewer’s expectations in that aspect. Roberts kept the movie short to 89 minutes; he kept the speed of both plot and scares really in line with the law of the limited running time. He knows that it is good news to horror fans when the concept of a creature feature is accepted by the creators, but the production is completely without any apology or pretense. This movie is not a statement about the morality of keeping wild pet animals or using them for scientific experiments. In fact, it quite simply takes the real-life horror of chimpanzee attacks and asks what would happen if a rabid virus got mixed in. The movie emphasizes the following truth: chimps are wild animals, incredibly strong and intelligent, and absolutely shouldn’t be kept as pets. They could easily get triggered and attack even if they weren’t rabies-infected. The director has used this genuine fear as a basis for his work, thus building a horror movie that works because the threat is still real even though the movie’s execution is heightened and theatrical. “Primate” is not the movie of the century. It will not change the horror genre. What it does offer is a well-made, competent slasher film that understands itself and its vision and delivers that with confidence. From Roberts’ work, he reveals that he is gifted to a great extent in the creation of suspense through the solid use of montage, camerawork, and sound. Horror lovers into practical effects, visceral violence, and old-fashioned creature features will find this movie a good buy. It is a good beginning to 2026’s horror movie market, neither more nor less, and that is totally okay.

OUR RATING – A WHEN CHIMPS ATTACK 7