My Thoughts on Primate
I seem incapable of resisting movies where an animal is clearly going to attack everyone involved - just turn off your brain with no mystery or puzzle to solve.
And Primate ends up being one of those movies, where it opens by explaining rabies in very plain terms, and tells you exactly what kind of night you’re in for - an infected animal, violence, no subtlety, and no surprises.
With that said, the opening still manages to be unpleasant in a way that feels more mean than effective, as we meet the chimpanzee, Ben, already past the point of saving, where someone is attacked almost immediately, announcing that restraint will not be part of the program here.
The story then backs up to earlier in the day and introduces a group of young people flying to Hawaii, who are loud in the way that young people often are when they think being loud equals being fun, and the movie doesn’t spend much time trying to make them likable.
Lucy, the central character, is heading home from college for the summer, and she’s bringing friends along, including her best friend, and another friend she didn’t know quite as well.
Ben is the family chimpanzee, who lives on the property and communicates using a tablet, and I thought the film handled the idea of a chimp living with a family in a very casual way, almost too casual really, as no one really reacts the way a normal person would react to discovering they’re staying in a house with a full-grown male chimpanzee.
Lucy apparently never thought to mention this to her friends ahead of time, which is either a massive oversight or a sign that the movie just wanted to get everyone in the same place as quickly as possible.
We do get a brief attempt at some emotional grounding here as well, where the girls’ mother died of cancer about a year earlier, and she’s the one who rescued Ben and studied animal communication, so this explains why Ben is treated more like a family member than a pet. but the movie never really sits with it long enough to make it matter, and it feels like backstory added to excuse the setup rather than deepen it.
Anyway, before her dad Adam leaves town for a book event, he mentions that Ben was bitten by a mongoose and killed it, which is brushed off as a minor issue, as antibiotics will fix it, and everything will be fine.
Even by horror movie standards, leaving your children alone with a possibly rabid chimpanzee feels a bit reckless and stupid, but the movie needs this to happen, so it happens.
Once Adam is gone, the tone shifts into party mode.
Music, drinking, flirting, bad decisions, it’s all familiar, and familiarity isn’t always a problem, but the problem is how quickly everything turns, as Ben’s change from calm to uncontrollable is almost immediate, as he goes from family pet to killing machine in what feels like minutes.
And when the attacks start, they are relentless.
One person is badly injured, and the rest retreat to the swimming pool, convinced they’re safe because chimps can’t swim, as this becomes the movie’s central location for a while, while Ben, meanwhile, proves to be resourceful enough to keep the threat going.
The violence itself is great though, which I am sure a lot of people will love, as while we don't get much variation, it is loud, bloody, and very direct, and very easy to have fun with.
By the end, Primate is exactly what it presents itself as - a movie about people being attacked by a rabid chimpanzee, and it doesn’t reach for themes, and it doesn’t ask you to think much beyond what’s happening on screen.
There’s an audience for that, and I have to say, I had some fun with Primate, as it was hard not to.