When you hear about a hot new horror movie set in Hawaii, featuring a cast of conventionally attractive 20-somethings, you probably don’t think that the villain will be a rabid chimp.
If you did expect that, you’ll be more prepared for the movie than the vast majority of people who saw Primate in theaters.
Primate is a natural horror film that follows the family of a (now-deceased) linguistic researcher who, after their mother’s passing, decided to adopt the chimpanzee she was training to speak English. Unexpectedly, the chimp, Ben, is bitten by a mongoose, and quickly starts becoming aggressive. The vast majority of the movie follows the main cast trying to avoid Ben and not be infected with rabies.
Primate had an unbelievably unique premise for a horror movie. Every single detail is insane. Upon reading about the film, it’s easy to think that when people say “rabid,” they mean “extremely aggressive.”
No— in Primate, the true villain of the story is literal rabies.
When watching, it’s very easy to tell that Ben has rabies, assuming you have any prior knowledge of rabies. You see him act “normally” for all of two seconds before you realize that he’s foaming at the mouth, afraid of water, and weirdly aggressive.
It’s only after Ben actually kills someone and bites someone else that anyone thinks to wonder if chimps can have rabies. The response to that is, perplexingly, “Rabies doesn’t exist in Hawaii.”
Weirdly, this is true. Hawaii is the only 100% rabies-free state in America. But even after the chimp tests positive for rabies, the dad completely ignores it because of the idea that Hawaii is rabies-free. It’s not like there’s something about Hawaii that prevents rabies, so why on earth would you not assume that somehow rabies has gotten onto the island and go to check if your daughters— who you left home alone with the chimp— are okay. Apparently, a book signing is more important.
The premise of Primate is super horrifying. They’re essentially trapped in their house with a beloved family member. It effectively communicates the tragedy that comes with the (admittedly unrelatable) experience of having to kill something you love to not be hurt by it. Even as Ben is mauling people, it’s hard not to feel bad for him. It’s not like he understands what he’s doing; he’s a rabid chimp.
Primate’s main issue is the actual execution. The most stupid part of the movie is every single part. For what felt like half of the movie, they’re hiding from the chimp in the pool. More accurately, they’re having a weird stand-off with the chimp from inside the pool. So much of this movie takes place inside the pool. It’s just straight-up boring. It makes sense from a narrative standpoint— one of the major symptoms of rabies is hydrophobia— but it’s the cinematographic equivalent of not just shooting yourself in the foot but instead amputating the whole leg.
Every scene in the pool is the same. They’re sitting in the pool, terrified, while Ben stands at the edge. Suddenly, someone has an idea! They’ll somehow trick Ben and escape for just long enough to call for help. Finally, some light at the end of the tunnel. When they try to execute their plan, Ben somehow has the mental capacity to totally undo it. At one point in the movie, he’s thrown off a cliff, claws his way back to the top, and hurls the guy who threw him off the cliff off of that same cliff.
If Primate had been marketed as a horror-comedy, there would have been no issue at all. If even one person, while reviewing the movie, had called it “campy,” it would have been very good. The issue is that everyone involved in the movie seems to take it extremely seriously. One of the scariest parts of the movie was when the T.V. was accidentally turned on and started absolutely blasting the Dora the Explorer theme song, throwing Ben into a fit of rage and making him smash it. It’s both funny and scary, but you can obviously tell that it’s not meant to be funny.
Generally, though, the movie knows it’s funny— it just never leans into it in the way that a comedic movie should. Some scenes are absolutely hilarious if you look past the gore. If you interpret Primate as a parody of other “final girl” horror movies, it’s amazing. The honest problem is that it’s really good at being a genre it didn’t mean to be, but really bad at being the genre it meant to be.
Primate is one of those movies that’s perfect for a night where you don’t really want to think too hard. It’s fun, it’s short, and it’s generally pretty funny. Even though it struggled to be “good,” it’s pretty easily “fine.”
Even if you feel like a rabid Chimp, ready to smash your TV out of boredom at some points, Primate is still worth a watch.
