When you hear about a hot new horror movie set in Hawaii, featuring a cast of conventionally attractive 20-somethings, you probably don\u2019t think that the villain will be a rabid chimp.<\/p>\n
If you did<\/i> expect that, you\u2019ll be more prepared for the movie than the vast majority of people who saw Primate <\/i>in theaters.<\/p>\n
Primate <\/i>is a natural horror film that follows the family of a (now-deceased) linguistic researcher who, after their mother\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Primate<\/i> had an unbelievably unique premise for a horror movie. Every single detail is insane. Upon reading about the film, it\u2019s easy to think that when people say \u201crabid,\u201d they mean \u201cextremely aggressive.\u201d<\/p>\n
No\u2014 in Primate<\/em>, the true villain of the story is literal rabies.<\/p>\n When watching, it\u2019s very easy to tell that Ben has rabies, assuming you have any<\/i> prior knowledge of rabies. You see him act \u201cnormally\u201d for all of two seconds before you realize that he\u2019s foaming at the mouth, afraid of water, and weirdly aggressive.<\/p>\n It\u2019s 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, \u201cRabies doesn\u2019t exist in Hawaii.\u201d<\/p>\n 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<\/i> because of the idea that Hawaii is rabies-free. It\u2019s not like there\u2019s 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\u2014 who you left home alone with the chimp<\/i>\u2014 are okay. Apparently, a book signing is more important.<\/p>\n The premise of Primate<\/i> is super horrifying. They\u2019re 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\u2019s hard not to feel bad <\/i>for him. It\u2019s not like he understands what he\u2019s doing; he\u2019s a rabid chimp.<\/p>\n Primate\u2019s<\/em> 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\u2019re hiding from the chimp in the pool. More accurately, they\u2019re having a weird stand-off with the chimp from inside the pool. So much of this movie takes place inside the pool. It\u2019s just straight-up boring. It makes sense from a narrative standpoint\u2014 one of the major symptoms of rabies is hydrophobia\u2014 but it\u2019s the cinematographic equivalent of not just shooting yourself in the foot but instead amputating the whole leg.<\/p>\n Every scene in the pool is the same. They\u2019re sitting in the pool, terrified, while Ben stands at the edge. Suddenly, someone has an idea! They\u2019ll 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\u2019s 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<\/i>.<\/p>\n If Primate<\/i> 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 \u201ccampy,” it would have been very good. The issue is that everyone involved in the movie seems to take it extremely <\/i>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.<\/p>\n Generally, though, the movie knows it\u2019s funny\u2014 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<\/i> as a parody of other \u201cfinal girl\u201d horror movies, it\u2019s amazing. The honest problem is that it\u2019s really good at being a genre it didn\u2019t mean to be, but really bad <\/i>at being the genre it meant to be.<\/p>\n Primate<\/i> is one of those movies that\u2019s perfect for a night where you don\u2019t really want to think too hard. It\u2019s fun, it\u2019s short, and it\u2019s generally pretty funny. Even though it struggled to be \u201cgood,\u201d it\u2019s pretty easily \u201cfine.\u201d<\/p>\n Even if you feel like a rabid Chimp, ready to smash your TV out of boredom at some points, Primate<\/i> is still worth a watch.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When you hear about a hot new horror movie set in Hawaii, featuring a cast of conventionally attractive 20-somethings, you probably don\u2019t think that the villain will be a rabid chimp. If you did expect that, you\u2019ll be more prepared for the movie than the vast majority of people who saw Primate in theaters. Primate…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":4794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,136,91],"tags":[336],"staff_name":[290],"class_list":["post-4791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-movies","category-reviews","tag-february-26","staff_name-ellie-andrews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4791"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4795,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4791\/revisions\/4795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4791"},{"taxonomy":"staff_name","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/staff_name?post=4791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}