Studio:   Paramount Pictures
Director: Johannes Roberts
Writer:   Johannes Roberts, Ernest Riera
Producer: Walter Hamada, John Hodges, Bradley Pilz
Stars:    Johnny Sequoyah, Jessica Alexander, Troy Kotsur, Victoria Wyant, Gia Hunter, Benjamin Cheng, Charlie Mann, Tienne Simon

Review Score:

Summary:

A family’s Hawaiian home becomes a house of horrors when a domesticated chimpanzee suddenly goes on a rabid rampage.

Synopsis:

Accompanied by her best friend Kate Hodges, college student Lucy Pimborough flies back home to Hawaii after an extended time away from her family. Lucy is disappointed to discover Kate invited her extroverted friend Hannah to come along for their summer getaway. On the plane, the young women befriend two young men, Drew and Brad, with whom they exchange phone numbers.

Kate’s brother Nick, who is also Lucy’s longtime crush, greets the girls at the airport. Everyone then drives to the remote island home where Lucy’s widower father Adam, a deaf author, lives with Lucy’s younger sister Erin, who resents that Lucy has been gone for so long.

Hannah is surprised to learn the Pimboroughs keep a domesticated chimpanzee, Ben, as a pet. Nick explains that Lucy’s mother, a linguistics professor who died of cancer, worked with Ben in her research, which is how Ben came to be in the home.

Unaware that he is in the early stages of hydrophobia brought on by rabies, Hannah sees Ben staring strangely at the house’s cliffside swimming pool. Ben suddenly grabs Hannah, but he quickly backs off after Adam blows a special whistle.

When he returns Ben to his enclosure, Adam notices Ben was bitten by a mongoose that Ben subsequently tore apart. Wary of the circumstances, Adam sends the mongoose to a veterinarian for testing and calls family friend Dr. Lambert to clean Ben’s cage. Adam then leaves his two daughters alone with Lucy’s friends to attend a book signing with his publisher.

Jealous that Hannah also has a romantic interest in Nick, Lucy breaks up their bonding by openly suggesting that Hannah call the two guys they met on the plane. Hannah coerces Lucy into leaving a provocative voicemail for Drew and Brad.

Dr. Lambert arrives at the house to check on Ben. Now fully rabid, Ben kills Lambert by tearing off his face.

Ben’s aggressive behavior soon terrifies Lucy, Erin, Hannah, Kate, and Nick as everyone gathers by the pool. Lucy calms Ben enough to momentarily restrain him with rope, but Ben breaks free of his restraints to viciously bite Erin. Since Ben can’t swim, the five friends get away from the chimpanzee by getting into the pool. Nick tries to push Ben off the cliff that the pool overlooks, but Ben throws Nick to a violent death instead.

Unable to dial 911 because the keypad broke when Hannah dropped her phone, the women use Recent Calls to send a chaotic request for help to Drew and Brad. The call cuts off when Ben tears at Hannah’s scalp, causing her to drop the phone to the bottom of the pool, completely disabling it.

During his book signing, Adam receives a worrisome text from his veterinarian Mary, who informs him the mongoose tested positive for rabies. Adam tries to call his daughters with a warning, but Lucy is separated from the phone charging in her bedroom.

Once Ben disappears, Lucy and Kate use the opportunity to retrieve the phone in Lucy’s bedroom. Noises attract Ben, and a chase ultimately ensues. Ben catches up to Kate and beats her to death with a rock. Hannah helps Lucy get back to the pool.

Expecting a drunken party, Drew and Brad arrive at the house. Ben kills Drew by tearing off his jaw. Ben then beats Brad to death. Hannah uses the distraction to escape outside to a vehicle where she manages to call 911, but Ben eventually gets inside the car and savagely beats Hannah to death.

Adam returns to the house. Fearing her father won’t hear Ben due to his deafness, Lucy tries distracting the chimpanzee. Ben breaks Lucy’s arm. Lucy continues letting Ben attack her to prevent him from going after Erin.

Adam realizes what is happening when he finds Drew’s mutilated body. Ben starts to tear at Lucy’s jaw until Adam distracts him with the whistle. Adam and Ben engage in a violent struggle that Lucy and Erin join. Adam seemingly kills Ben by stabbing him with a broken wine bottle.

Lucy and Erin embrace their father. Seeing Ben rise from the ground, Lucy pushes her father and sister to either side so that Ben only tackles her through a glass partition on a balcony. Ben falls onto a broken wooden chair that impales him. Adam and Erin grab Lucy and pull her to safety. Authorities soon arrive at the scene as Lucy and Adam send Erin away in an ambulance.

Review:

Every now and then, a hunger for horror can be satisfied simply. Elaborate ingredients like complex characters and intricate plotlines aren’t always required to make a savory meal out of a midnight movie. Sometimes, one might merely have a taste for the comforting fast-food flavors of straightforward suspense, gnarly kills, and a kooky concept, all of which are generously portioned on “Primate’s” gleefully gory plate of killer animal carnage.

Not every thriller can be entertaining by being unapologetically uncomplicated, outrageously shocking, and concurrently campy, but “Primate” has so much self-aware confidence in its go-for-the-throat style that the film wears those B-movie badges proudly. “Primate” ultimately amounts to a classic slasher flick where a rabid chimpanzee does the masked maniac’s job, though you wouldn’t necessarily know you’re in for raw, retro schlock based on how the movie begins.

There are quite a few people to get to know at the outset. First up is Lucy Pimborough, a typical college girl on her way home to Hawaii after extended time away from her little sister Erin and their widower father Adam, a deaf author. Joining Lucy for a summer of swimming in the Pimborough home’s cliffside pool is her bestie Kate. Lucy is hardly thrilled to learn Kate also invited annoying extrovert Hannah to come with them. An awkward flight for those three friends is made mildly more tolerable by meeting two party people, Drew and Brad, before being greeted by Kate’s brother Nick on the ground.

Now, Lucy has a longtime crush on Nick, which makes the flirting between him and Hannah hit Lucy hard in her heart. Erin is also unhappy about her big sister being gone for so long, so there are family matters to tend to as well. Dad is just happy to have his girls together again, even though he’s about to leave them alone for a big book tour, as it’s been tough for them all since their mom died of cancer.

Throw out any notes regarding these romances and relationships because none of it matters. These are all threads for a cursory curtain that drops away entirely once Ben, the family’s pet chimp who was previously part of their linguistics professor mother’s research, gets rabies and goes on a rampage. Once he’s out of his enclosure, “Primate” breaks out of its cage to become a wild romp of peeled-off faces, pulled-off jaws, and going ape all over everyone trapped in the house with Ben.

“Primate” packs in just about every slasher trope in the book. Extended sequences of impromptu hide-and-seek. An uncanny ability to stay one step ahead of victims by strategically disappearing and reappearing. Thinking the killer is dead only for him to suddenly sit up like The Undertaker. “Primate” gets away with beating all these dead horses and more because of how amusingly enjoyable it is to watch a chimp make murderous moves like terrorizing a woman in a vehicle by fiddling with the remote locks on her car keys. It’s preposterous, yet “Primate” presents these scenes as absurdly fun at the same time.

He’s not credited in a title card, but top banana goes to Miguel Torres Umba, the performer who plays Ben. Giving Andy Serkis a serious run for his monkey money, Umba manages to make Ben simultaneously sympathetic and tensely terrifying. Ben’s makeup design intentionally tells the audience this is a man in a suit, but having that hint of chimpanzee cheesiness makes the vicious violence, which is often accompanied by crunchy noises certain to make hands and teeth clench, retain an escapist air of frightful fantasy that blends realism with ridiculousness.

It’s hard to come up with a valid complaint capable of turning a thumb down. If you willingly watch a horror film premised on a blood-crazed chimp bashing in skulls, then you have to expect that movie to be somewhat silly no matter how savage the slaughter gets. “Primate” understands this assignment better than anyone, delivering a weird excursion into animalized insanity you can practically see smirking every time a bone snaps. Viewers will wear this same wicked grin as long as they equally understand all “Primate” really wants to do is have a gruesomely good time, never mind nonsensical nuttiness.

Review Score: 75