Scary Movies: Primate

Primate is a movie about a pet chimpanzee, really a beloved family member, who gets rabies and in a short time turns from gentle companion to terrifying predator. It’s not deep, but it’s entertaining enough and well made for what it is. I don’t think King Kong is in any danger of being dislodged from his place as reigning great ape of the movie house. However, if you’re really jazzed to see a chimpanzee rip somebody’s face off, this is your flick.

Let’s get to the plot description, which frankly won’t take very long.

Lucy is flying home to Hawaii from college with her friends Kate and Hannah. On the plane they meet a couple cute guys, Drew and Brad, and exchange numbers with them. Her friends are going to spend a couple weeks with her. At the airport, her brother, Nick, picks the three of them up and drives them to the family home, which turns out to be an unbelievably posh mansion on a cliff overlooking the sea. Lucy’s father, Adam, is some sort of famous researcher, and also deaf. He has to leave that evening to speak at a conference on the island, and won’t be back for a couple days.

At Lucy’s house, she introduces her friends to her younger sister, Erin, and the family pet, Ben, a chimpanzee. Ben is sweet and wants to shake hands with Kate and Hannah. Lucy gives him a teddy bear. Before he leaves for his conference, Adam discovers a dead mongoose in Ben’s enclosure and notices that Ben has a bite mark on his arm. He calls the veterinarian to come check on Ben that evening, but is not especially worried as Hawaii is rabies-free.

Later that night, Ben is acting withdrawn and as if he doesn’t feel well. Unbeknownst to the college students, he has killed the visiting veterinarian, ripping his face right off his skull (it was actually the first scene of the movie). At the pool, Ben menaces two of the teens, so Lucy and Nick try to restrain him with a rope. Ben bites through the rope and attacks one of the teens, chomping on her leg. The teens decide to jump in the pool as Ben can’t swim. (Also turns out to be the right move, since he has rabies and is repulsed by water, although they don’t realize this aspect of the situation.)

The teens have left their phones on the pool deck and repeatedly try to distract Ben to retrieve one, but Ben manages to grab Nick during one attempt and throw him over the side of the pool, where he falls down the cliff to his death. Ben also hunts down and kills one of the teens who’s made it into the house to get her phone, smashing her head. I’m pretty sure that while rabies can make its victims more aggressive, it doesn’t turn them into calculating hunters, or for that matter, take effect in a single day, but we’ll let that go in the name of suspending disbelief.

Will the remaining teens be able to retrieve a phone and call for aid? Will Drew and Brad, the cute guys from the plane, arrive and help the remaining girls (or maybe they’ll arrive and simply become new victims of Ben’s madness…)? Will Adam notice that his calls to his daughters aren’t getting through and come home to see that’s wrong, and even if he does, what could a deaf man do to help in this situation? Will we see any more awesome face ripping scenes? (Only that last one is assured.)

Primate (2026)
Story/Plot/Characters— Essentially no character development. If we’d gotten to know the characters better, the horror would have been more meaningful, but it’s not essential if this movie is just aiming to show some gory great ape horror. The dialogue is basic but not stupid, and the teen-agers talk like contemporary teens do. Same with the plot–the movie could have done more, but it didn’t want to, and it did fine with its limited goals. There could have been some interesting moral themes about adopting wild animals, or the arrogance of man in dealing with nature. Again, the movie could have been more ambitious but the producers/director/writer simply didn’t want it to be, and they were perfectly competent in what they did do. (1.5 points)
Special Effects— I believe Ben is played by an actual chimpanzee in the early scenes, but the last half of the movie becomes very dark and it’s hard to see anything–likely to cover up that the enraged version of Ben is actually played by a human in a costume. There’s a fair amount of blood, gore, and face-ripping, all nicely done, with the special effects in one scene being, let’s say, jaw-dropping. (1 point)
Scariness— A really horrific scenario, and the scares are competently executed. (1.5 points)
Atmosphere/Freakiness— A chimp on the loose is fairly freaky. (1 points)
Total=5 points (Okay)

Well-made, and a little disappointing as it’s easy to see how with more ambition the producers could have made a really great horror film. Still, Primate is highly watchable (if you have the stomach for some awesome face-ripping action) and it’s a fun gory way for a horror fan to spend 90 minutes.