Primate, 2025.
Directed by Johannes Roberts.
Starring Johnny Sequoyah, Troy Kotsur, Jessica Alexander, Victoria Wyant, Benjamin Cheng, Gia Hunter, Miguel Torres Umba, Ben Pronsky, Kae Alexander, Tienne Simon, and Charlie Mann.
SYNOPSIS:
A group of friends’ tropical vacation turns into a terrifying, primal tale of horror and survival.
It checks out that director Johannes Roberts has made both shark thrillers and an adaptation of a globally popular zombie video game series, as his killer-chimpanzee slasher flick Primate contains elements of both.
Once the paper-thin characters and rabies-infected chimp are quickly introduced (alongside a somewhat estranged family dynamic that Roberts and co-screenwriter Ernest Riera are playing a bit too seriously in hopes of earning an emotional response in the finale that doesn’t quite come), the filmmakers find a contrived way to write these party-happy young adults into a situation where safety comes in the form of trapping themselves in a swimming pool that family pet Ben (the prologue also hurriedly mentions a now dead mother who was a linguistics professor working toward a breakthrough in communications between humans and primates) is afraid to dive into, although nevertheless circles the area waiting for the chance to strike anyone who comes close enough to land.
Two thoughts come to mind, with the first being that it’s nearly impossible to care about a white family so wealthy that they are living in a glass house over the edge of a Hawaiian cliff, experimenting with simians even if the father is the underappreciated and terrific deaf actor Troy Kotsur playing a famous novelist with a workaholic habit that has led to neglecting his family. He is about to do so some more, leaving the home to his daughter Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) and her sister, friends, a potential love interest, and some fuckboys from a flight back home they contemplate inviting over during their good times. The other thought is that this is a riff on one of those shark movies where characters are stuck on a patch of land, this time with some environmental role reversal and a chimpanzee.
Unfortunately, as clever as that stretch is in the outdoor swimming pool (which is surrounded by caves and the previously mentioned cliffside) with some of the more imaginative strokes of violence, it’s evident that Johannes Roberts also feels cornered in that stranding concept, finding reasons for characters to leave the pool or for Ben (menacingly played by Miguel Torres Umba, in a suit) to leave the area, which also causes one or more characters to stumble around the house and make blaring noise calling attention to the location in the most idiotic ways that will leave one hoping they die. It’s also worth noting that Adrian Johnston’s catchy synthetic score similarly emphasizes being loud above all else during suspenseful chases.
And yet it’s hard to get too down on Primate since it does deliver perhaps where it matters most, with some brutal kills involving everything from ripping off flesh and body parts to straight-up brawls between the humans and Ben. A disabled character is treated with dignity, with their condition not used as a plot point (mainstream audiences will even be forced to read ASL subtitles once in a while), but rather as the most suspenseful sequence in the movie. Some fuckboy also gets his jaw ripped completely off.
There is urgency, danger, and tension, even if the film mostly fails at everything it is going for in terms of characterization and story. Hell, one character is painted as a villain, and typically behaves selfishly throughout, even though her suggestion that Ben needs to be put down 15 minutes into the movie, upon a sudden behavioral change, is, yes, cruel, but correct, and turns out to be the necessary course of action by the end. That also calls into question exactly what the message is here. Primate is also so eager to get to the horror aspect that Ben’s presence and importance to this family are never established or emotionally felt, which flattens much of the investment it wants in the survival aspect.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder
