Warning: This review will be heavy on the spoilers. Not explicitly, but to really get to my main criticism of the film, I do have to talk a bit about some of the character deaths. I will refrain from names, but after going back and forth with myself on how to get to the meat of the criticism, it is just easier to refer to what happens than try to allude.
Primate follows a Ben, a chimpanzee raised by a researcher and taught to sign. Ben gets bitten and infected with rabies just as Lucy Pinborough (Johnny Sequoyah) arrives to visit her father Adam (Troy Kotsur) and sister Erin (Gia Hunter). Her mother (who has died before the film starts) is the researcher who raised Ben and the family keeps him around as a kind of pet. Joining Lucy on this family visit are her college friends Kate and Nick (Victoria Wyant and Benjamin Cheng) and college frenemy Hannah (Jessica Alexander). Why are so many people visiting her family? To increase the body count, of course!
This is a mean movie. No Duh! you think to yourself, It's about a killer chimpanzee! And you're not entirely wrong about that, but also not entire right. This movie approaches the kills with a sense of brutality you don't see in too many horror movies. It's not quite at Terrifier levels, but the first kill of the movie involves someone's entire face being ripped off and that isn't even the most extreme one.
I can appreciate a mean horror movie. What I don't appreciate is one that wants to be hardcore while still remaining gutless.
Because that is a pervasive problem with the movie. It wants to shock you with its kills - which, they are graphic and brutal - but it isn't going to dare do something like kill one of the core family members. Every other person is very obviously a meatbag and every member of the family has script immunity that would make a freshman screenwriter blush. The amount of attacks - from a rabid chimpanzee, I feel the need to note - that the family members survive with minimal damage borders on parody.
None of this breaks the movie, but it is frustrating for someone who frequently watches horror movies to see this film pull back in such an obvious way. I'm not saying everyone has to die, but other than a bite one of them receives, everything is pretty much shrugged off, including one part where I am pretty sure all the fingers of one of the characters are bent backwards with an audible snap.
Compare this with one of the meatbag characters who, while getting the goriest kill of the movie (one that will make Best Of lists in the future, I am sure) also has a weirdly rapey buildup before getting to the kill. Rapey from the chimp, I feel the need to note. It is obviously meant to push boundaries, and I think others could write a dissertation on how to read that scene, but juxtaposed with what happens with the family, it feels like they are in two different movies.
Or possibly three different movies. You'll notice Troy Kotsur, a deaf actor, plays the father. You'd think this would play a more substantial part in the movie, but there is only one scene that really uses his inability to hear to up the tension. He doesn't get much focus (he is away from the house for the bulk of the movie) but the scene hints at a much for interesting - and likely much more terrifying - version of this film. It's a missed opportunity.
You'd think with all of these complaints, I'd hate the movie, but it's actually fairly solid. The kills are great, there is just enough character development to make our characters feel like real people, and the CGI on the chimp is amazing. It is just so tantalizingly close to being an even better version of itself. I do think most horror movie fans will enjoy it, and I'd easily recommend it despite my critiques.
7 out of 10
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