Primate is a serviceable entertainment with enough B-movie charms to justify its existence. It’s a movie that’s driven by its characters and atmosphere but it never forgets to give jolting gory thrills. Nothing more and nothing less.
The movie centers around three friends named Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah), Kate (Victoria Wyant) and Nick (Benjamin Cheng). Nick is Lucy’s friend as well as a potential love interest and Kate’s brother. Kate also invites another girl named Hannah (Jessica Alexander) without Lucy’s notice.
The four of them are headed to Hawaii,. Lucy’s home after she’s been away for far too long. There they meet her deaf father Adam (Troy Kotsur), a famous writer. They all.communicate through sign language with him.
The quartet meets Ben, a chimpanzee who is also able to communicate via a tablet with software. It isn’t long before things spiral out of control when Ben gets bitten by a mongoose and the chimp has developed rabies as a result.
Ben then goes a ferocious rampage but it’s learned that he has a fear of the water so the friends have to stay inside the indoor swimming pool while they strategize a plan to get help and stay alive.
The movie mostly takes place at night which provides ample opportunities for the chimp to terrorize his suspecting victims. There are some scenes where the characters do use their wits to and outsmart Ben. One of them involves getting a floaty.
Of course with this being a creature feature it’s just a countdown to the inevitable until the chimp goes ape by killing off some of the characters in gruesome fashion. The movie could’ve been a relentless gorefest and while some scenes are quite brutal, it’s surprisingly restrained.
There’s two boys that show up after the girls met them on their flight. They think they’re there to have fun but it’s predictable that they get caught in the crossfire.
The movie has a murky look with its violent scenes which I guess is so the movie is able to maintain an R rating and we can barely see what’s going on when Ben strikes, but it de-utilizes that technique too much to the point where we want to see at least gruesome scene play out in all its bloody madness.
Primate is a creature feature made with enough style and skill to entertain its target audience and as long as they walk in with those expectations, it’s satisfactory.
It’s more fun than a barrel of monkeys, but some part of me wanted it to go more ape than what we get in the end.
Grade: B
(Rated R for strong bloody violent content, gore, language, and some drug use.)
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