Primate: A Review

PRIMATE

"Ben, the two of us need look no more. We both found what we were looking for". It seems also insane that a song about a murderous mouse could be now thought of as a tender love ballad. Yet Ben, from the film of the same name, became a Number One hit for Michael Jackson. It was even nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song. It is odd that Primate did not take advantage of Ben given that our murderous simian has that name. To be fair, I think many Zoomers would not know of Ben. Primate is pretty much schlock and aware of it. It is poorly acted, sometimes groan-inducingly idiotic but fully committed to its premise.

We start with an attack on a veterinarian by a crazed chimpanzee. We then go back 36 hours earlier on an airplane bound for Hawaii. Here, Lucy (Johnny Sequoiah) is going back home to see her family. She's traveling with her BFF Kate (Victoria Wyant) and their other friend, Nick (Benjamin Cheng). Kate has brought Hannah (Jessica Alexander), whom Lucy is not fond of. The girls do have time aboard to flirt with fellow passengers Drew (Charlie Mann) and Brad (Tienne Simon).

Once in Hawaii, they all go to the remote home of Lucy's father Adam (Troy Kutsar), a famous writer. Adam is happy to have his daughter back. Less so is Lucy's sister Erin (Gia Hunter), who feels that Lucy has forgotten about them. One being who is happy to have Lucy back is their pet monkey, Ben. Hannah and Kate are alarmed at having a chimpanzee roaming about. However, the family assures them that Ben is completely domesticated, almost part of the family.

That is, until Adam finds a dead mongoose in Ben's enclosure. Could it have bitten Ben? Could it have given Ben rabies? Adam has to go to a book signing. He is positive that Ben is ultimately fine. Ben, however, is anything but fine. Ben has gone bananas (sorry, couldn't resist). Soon, he begins a murderous rampage on anyone he can lay his paws on. Who will live and who will die during this dark night on the mini planet of the apes?

No one ever turns the lights on. Not once. I do not know why this particular detail in Primate stuck out to me. There could not have been a power outage as the television, fans and pool lights continued working. I can grant a little leeway that the people trapped with the rampaging beast would want to hide in the dark. That, however, is not something that I can accept when Drew and Brad manage to enter the house. The same with Adam, who would not have known about the murderous monkeyshines going on. It is the most natural, instinctive thing to turn the lights on when entering a dark room, yet no one ever turns the lights on.

I get that this is an odd detail to fixate on. I get that the lights had to stay off in director/cowriter Johannes Roberts' film (written with Ernest Riera). I just had trouble accepting the logic of this detail even in a movie about a crazed chimpanzee. 

My mind wandered from time to time wondering through logic in Primate. I wondered why Ben decided to stalk the houseguests rather than escape into the jungles of Hawaii. I wondered why Nick, Lucy, Kate and Hannah were screaming for help when trapped in the pool when they knew that they were in an isolated area far from any other homes. I wondered why no one ever contemplated Ben turning psycho and keeping at the minimum a tranquilizer gun that would have solved the problem. I wondered why Hannah's suggestion of shooting Ben was summarily rejected when it was the perfectly sensible thing to do.

In this case, I wondered too much in giving Primate any chance of logic. Primate is not meant to be a logical film. It is meant to give you murderous monkeys and the vague suggestion that the psychotic chimpanzee may end up sexually assaulting Drew. We are spared that scene of jungle love but are given a surprisingly restrained tearing off of a jaw. I say "surprisingly restrained" because despite the R rating I thought Primate was not all that graphic. 

It was not as graphic as Final Destinations Bloodlines, which I found hilarious and enjoyed tremendously. I did not find Primate hilarious and did not enjoy it as much. I found it surprisingly dark visually. It was as if the filmmakers wanted to be bloody but still wanted things just opaque enough figuratively and literally to not truly horrify. A particular case in point is when, in a rare moment of intelligence, one of the houseguests attempts to push Ben off a cliff. The end result is that it is the human that plunges to what could have been a hilarious or gruesome or gruesomely hilarious death. We do see the person land headfirst on a pile of rocks. We even get hints of brain and blood splatter. We, however, still get it mostly in shadows. 

Primate is not acted. It is performed. The only name in the film is Troy Kotsur, who is conveniently shunted off for most of the film. The former Oscar-winner now finds himself in films like Primate. It is nice to see a character's deafness not be anything out of the ordinary. I cannot say whether Kotsur is in on the joke or not. He was fine, serviceable, nothing to say that he was elevating Primate or sinking into parody. 

I want to say that the rest of the cast is there for their physical appeal. None of them showed that they could actually act. To be fair, Primate makes the characters say and do incredibly dumb things. In some ways, I found Primate to be surprisingly tame. The kills and attacks were almost always in shadows and low light. Again, I think that the film wanted to be graphic but could not fully commit. I'm not wildly enthusiastic about violence on film. However, in something like Primate, I could give it a little more leeway. It is perhaps an odd criticism that I thought Primate was not violent enough. 

That all being said, I noticed that the audience was fully into the film. To be fair, the men were laughing uproariously throughout Primate. The women were terrified and yelling at the screen. Make of that what you will.

Primate is surprisingly short at under 90 minutes. It is not intelligent. It is pretty silly. It is not as fun as Final Destinations Bloodlines, my go-to for cheerfully gruesome films. On the whole though, Primate is acceptable cinematic monkey business. 

DECISION: C+