Primate: A Chilling Start to the New Year

The first week of January brings the year’s first new theatrical release, and more often than not, it’s a horror film so forgettable it reinforces the idea that the month is merely a dumping ground for studios. This year’s entry is Paramount Pictures’ Primate, a creature feature centered on a pet chimpanzee that contracts rabies and begins terrorizing its family and their friends. The film comes from writer-director Johannes Roberts, whose résumé includes such films as 47 Meters Down, The Strangers: Prey at Night, and Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City; credentials that, when paired with its premise and release date, don’t exactly inspire confidence. In cases like these, it is best to approach these films with an open mind, though one can’t help but walk in with low expectations given that pedigree. Creature features, especially modern ones, rarely manage to be genuinely effective. All things considered, against the odds already stacked against it, the film proves to be a surprisingly fun time, and one that will undoubtedly play well with a crowd. 

Primate stars Sequoyah (Dexter: New Blood) as Lucy, a college student who returns to her family’s beach house in Hawaii, after years of avoiding home following her mother’s death, passing away from cancer. She brings along her best friend Kate (Victoria Wyant), who in turn invites her frenemy Hannah (Jessica Alexander) to join them on the trip. The family lives in a secluded cliffside home where they adopted Ben, a pet chimpanzee, whom they raised as part of a study. When Lucy’s father Adam (played by Oscar winner Troy Kotsur, who gives much more gravitas to this film than it frankly deserves) leaves for the weekend, Lucy, her friends, her childhood crush Nick (Benjamin Cheng), and her younger sister Erin (Gia Hunter) are left alone only to discover that their friendly chimpanzee has contracted rabies. The disease would quickly turn the chimp who was once a beloved family pet into a deadly killing machine.

Boasting a fairly simple premise while keeping the action largely confined to a single location, these narrative choices are ultimately what makes the film so effective. The core of the story, being trapped in a remote setting with a rabid animal, is inherently unsettling and generates tension. The film smartly leans into the absurdity of the situation, blending horror and humor in a way that helps offset the occasionally extreme violence, and makes it all the more fun. At times, however, this approach is pushed too far, transforming the chimpanzee into something closer to a Jason Voorhees style slasher villain. His overt taunting and bloodlust occasionally undercut the premise, making the film feel a bit too silly for its own good, especially towards the end.

Above all else, for horror fans seeking creative kills and blood-splattered mayhem, Primate delivers in abundance. The film is far more violent and extreme than one might expect, even if much of it plays as relatively cartoonish. Faces are sliced off, limbs are severed, and blood gushes all over the place. The kills are frequently surprising and so exaggerated that they often become part of the film’s humor. The effects are impressively convincing as well, particularly the CGI chimpanzee, which at times looks comparable to something out of Planet of the Apes, even if it lacks the same level of expressiveness.

Primate doesn’t necessarily transcend its limited potential, but it’s much more fun than most horror films in the same lane, due to its impressive effects, gnarly kills, and a cast that’s actually giving it their all.

still courtesy of Paramount Pictures

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Tristan French