By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Starring Johnny Sequoyah, Jessica Alexander and Troy Kotsur
Directed by Johannes Roberts
Written by Johannes Roberts and Ernest Riera
Paramount
Forty-six years after Paramount Pictures helped mainstream the sequential slaughter of young people with the first FRIDAY THE 13TH, PRIMATE finds the studio crossing that concept with the animal-amok genre so popular in video/cable/streaming fare. Essentially a Syfy movie done slicker, it has just enough elemental scares and shocks to provide a diverting ride through the perils of primate change.
An ominous opening text screen establishes that rabies was once known as hydrophobia, or fear of water, though the plot hinges on the infected Ben the chimpanzee being unable to swim rather than possessing that fear. The movie proper starts with a veterinarian entering Ben’s elaborate enclosure and getting a very nasty greeting from the enraged ape. (His fate, and another key scene or two, seem directly inspired by the horrifying Travis the chimp incident in Connecticut in 2009.)
Since we can guess that this story isn’t actually beginning with Ben in full murder mode, we can also guess that this sequence will end with “36 Hours Earlier.” And so it is that we jump back to college student Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) arriving in Hawaii after some time away from her deaf author father Adam (Troy Kotsur, in a significant change of pace following his Best Actor Oscar win for CODA) and younger sister Erin (Gia Hunter). Mom, now dead a year from cancer, was a linguistics professor who brought Ben into their home, and he’s now part of the family, with whom he communicates via both American Sign Language and a speaking tablet.
What Lucy, plus old friends Kate (Victoria Wyant) and Nick (Benjamin Cheng) and new pal Hannah (Jessica Alexander), who join Lucy at the family’s big and remote cliffside house, don’t know at first is that Ben has been bitten by a rabid mongoose. (This occasions the first time in cinema history that you’ll hear the line “I’ll send the mongoose in for testing” spoken.) It’s not very long at all before Ben is drooling ALIEN-esque slime, and in case you don’t get the point, director Johannes Roberts shoots this reveal with a 180-degree rotating camera. With Adam away at a book signing, it’s everyone else into the pool, stranded there by the prowling chimp and trying to figure out escape methods that inevitably don’t go well.
Much has been made in advance coverage and comments about the practically executed gore in PRIMATE, though aside from the punchline of that cold open (which appears to be partially digitally created), there’s only one really memorable prosthetic kill gag; the rest are largely messy beatings. It’s also part of the Ben-on-victim sequence that most successfully combines and sustains shivers and black humor. More consistently impressive on a physical-effects level is Ben himself, thanks to creature effects designers Neill Gorton and Kate Walshe and performer Miguel Torres Umba. No doubt there was CG enhancement here and there, but Ben convinces as a true physical threat and a persuasively wild animal, even as he vacillates from being totally, rabidly crazed to still being of sound enough mind to play cat-and-mouse games with his two-legged prey.
He also has more personality than any of the humans, who are pleasant enough at best and played enthusiastically without being given much depth or inner life. They frequently do foolish things that chip away at our concern for them, and a couple of mild conflicts are set up without going much of anywhere. Here’s the sum total of Erin being upset that Lucy has spent so much time away from her:
“You were gone forever.”
“I’m back now.”
“It was lonely here.”
“I’m sorry.”
Next. There’s also a love triangle teased between Lucy, Nick and Hannah that doesn’t pay off either, since the filmmakers are much more concerned with violence than sex. Most crucially, Roberts and co-writer Ernest Riera only briefly tell us rather than taking the time to show us what a valued and beloved “brother/son” Ben has become. That might have added a sense of tragedy to his devolution, which is foregone in favor of his simply becoming a violent beast meting out graphic bodily and facial destruction.
For all the bloodshed, the most effective parts of PRIMATE are the leadups to some of the carnage, including a tense, well-staged sequence making tingly use of silence. Commendable on a sonic level is the Tangerine Dream-like score by Emmy and BAFTA winner Adrian Johnston, which accentuates the ’80s vibe running throughout PRIMATE. The modern attitudes and elusive smartphones of its protagonists notwithstanding, the movie echoes the no-frills, straightforward fright filmmaking of that decade, and is enjoyable on that level—though some viewers might find themselves desiring a few distinctive frills over the course of its 89 minutes.
