REVIEW: “Primate”
Courtesy of Paramount Pictures
The horror genre has always carved out a special place for creature features – especially the “animals gone wild” variety. From the relentless menace of The Birds (1963) to the primal terror of Jaws (1975), from the eco-horror paranoia of Piranha (1978) to the blunt brutality of Grizzly (1976), these films tap into something visceral. Primate fits neatly into this lineage, owing an obvious debt to Cujo (1983) – even if it swaps a rabid St. Bernard for an infected chimpanzee. It knows what worked about those earlier films and leans into it, delivering a lean, vicious throwback that feels intentionally old-school in both spirit and execution.
The setup is straightforward. College student Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) heads home to Hawaii for summer break after being away for a while, bringing her best friend Kate (Victoria Wyant) and frenemy Hannah (Jessica Alexander) along. They’re met by Lucy’s childhood crush, who also happens to be Kate’s brother, Nick (Benjamin Cheng), and are whisked off to Lucy’s family’s stunning cliffside mansion. Once there, Lucy happily reconnects with her successful deaf novelist father, Adam (Troy Kotsur), while cautiously navigating a frostier reunion with her younger sister Erin (Gia Hunter), who resents Lucy for leaving for college. As if the family dynamics weren’t already complicated enough, the movie introduces one more key player: Ben, the family’s pet chimpanzee, who Lucy’s late mother once studied as part of her work as a linguist.
Adam is thrilled to have both of his daughters back under the same roof and eager to enjoy family time, but a looming book tour pulls him away almost immediately, leaving Lucy, Erin, Nick, and the others with free rein of the mansion. With no parents around, plans quickly shift from family bonding to partying—and possibly even inviting over a couple of random guys the girls flirted with on their flight from the mainland. Before leaving, though, Adam notices that Ben isn’t quite himself; snappier, twitchier, and clearly on edge. The explanation seems harmless: Ben was bitten by a mongoose that wandered into his enclosure. Adam asks his daughters to keep an eye on him until the local vet can come by. What no one realizes is that the mongoose was rabid and that the infection has begun to take hold. Ben’s behavior escalates quickly, and before long, he’s fully in the throes of rabies, no longer just a slightly unsettling presence but an active threat, stalking the girls through the mansion and turning their vacation into a desperate fight for survival.
On paper, and in execution, the premise is thin. That thinness becomes harder to ignore once you remember rabies doesn’t exist in Hawaii and that privately owning a chimp there is illegal. Director Johannes Roberts (no stranger to creature chaos after directing 2016’s 47 Meters Down and 2019’s 47 Meters Down: Uncaged) and co-writer Ernest Riera clearly don’t care about those details. Facts and realism are tossed aside in favor of mayhem and carnage. Unfortunately, that single-minded focus leaves little room for substance or depth. The characters are familiar archetypes: the hero, the best friend, the love interest, the nemesis. And the clunky dialogue and parade of bad decisions they make don’t help them feel three-dimensional. It’s hard to care who lives or dies when most of the cast barely registers, with only Sequoyah and Kotsur managing to make much of an impression. It also doesn’t help that the film spends barely any time with Ben before the rabies kicks in, robbing his transformation of emotional weight.
Where Primate really shines is in how Ben is brought to life. Roberts wisely opts for an old-school approach, utilizing practical makeup effects and a full-body performance by creature performer Miguel Torres Umba, rather than relying on CGI. The result is a chimp with real physical weight and presence, which goes a long way toward selling him as a legitimate threat. The film clearly understands the limitations of its man-in-a-suit approach, staging many of Ben’s scenes in low light or near-total darkness to hide the seams cleverly. It’s a classic trick, and it’s mostly effective. Adding to the movie’s overall throwback vibe is Adrian Johnston’s synth-heavy score, which pulses with retro menace and feels cut from the same cloth as classic ‘80s horror scores, without feeling like a cheap imitation.
In the end, Primate works best when you meet it on its own terms. It’s thin on logic, light on genuine scares, and far more interested in racking up a body count than any real suspense, playing more like a slasher movie in disguise than a traditional creature feature. Still, the brisk pacing, effective old-school creature work, and a handful of satisfyingly gnarly kills keep things interesting. It won’t linger in your nightmares or leave a lasting mark on the genre, but as a lean, bloody throwback that knows exactly what it is, Primate delivers just enough primal thrills to scratch that creature feature itch. Sometimes that’s all you need.
Primate is currently playing in wide release.