Who would’ve thought that the first studio production of the year would be a genuine heater, especially given that the January slate doesn’t usually promise a good time at the movies? Who would’ve also thought that a major Hollywood studio would greenlight what is essentially an exploitation film, promising a simple movie with genuinely nasty violence that shocked a packed cinema on a cold evening in Montreal? This is what Primate offers, a lean-and-mean horror which focuses on a rabid chimpanzee killing people. I’m not sure where this fits into the MVP: Most Valuable Primate cinematic universe, but the titular primate has certainly left the hockey sticks behind and is now hellbent on revenge.
Truth be told, none of this should’ve worked. The director, Johannes Roberts, doesn’t have a good movie to his name, and the conceit of the film – directly taking a page from Boaz Davidson’s Going Bananas – seems incredibly dated. In an era of performance capture giving us realistic simian portrayals in the Planet of the Apes saga, a Creature Feature where an actor in a chimpanzee suit kills humans in more violent ways than one seems like something you’d see in the 1980s, not in the year of our lord 2026. But Roberts and co-screenwriter Ernest Riera seem cognizant in knowing that cinema, as a mere form of pure entertainment, sometimes needs to stay within primal filmmaking methods to remind audiences what fun can feel like on the big screen.
Sure, none of the characters are developed, some of the filmmaking is genuinely incompetent and uncreative, and the plot seems to have been written on a napkin cloth rather than a typewriter or CELTX (whatever screenwriting method you prefer). None of this matters. Right off the gate, Primate teases audiences that its 89-minute runtime will focus on “a rabid monkey kills people in extremely violent ways,” through a cold open that sees a doctor about to give Ben (Miguel Torres Umba) a rabies shot but gets his face ripped off in the process. The rest of the film delivers on that promise in frequently gruesome, but always exhilarating ways. We’ve come to see a rabid monkey kill people. We will see just that.
For a studio film, the violence is surprisingly perverse, and borders on exploitation filmmaking, abandoning all notions of good taste and is unafraid at staging a bevy of sequences where characters won’t just get merely killed, but have their heads crushed, body parts dismembered, or their chests completely obliterated by the monkey’s pounding. All of it is played in a self-serious way, through Adrian Johnston’s John Carpenter-esque score, but the movie always remains playful enough without ever forgetting that what we’re seeing here is completely ridiculous. It knows exactly what type of movie it wants to be, and what to convey to the audience.
None of it should be taken seriously, even if we will amp up the violence and craft a dread-inducing atmosphere where you’ll feel your heart pounding through Ben’s thundering screeches resonating within the cinema’s speakers, and violence so unpleasant that a few audience members walked out in disdain. I can’t genuinely hate a film that pushes buttons the way Roberts does here, far more than ever accomplished in his pretty dour career. It’s only when Primate attempts to develop a relationship between the main protagonists that we’re reminded of the British filmmaker’s ineptitude at making anything feel tangible and textured, especially when focusing on the family’s father, Adam (Troy Kotsur), a successful author whose deafness may put him at a disadvantage when confronted face-to-face with a rabid Ben.
The movie gives us hints that it will perhaps explore some character-driven elements more meaningfully than simply staying at the “rabid monkey killing machine” narrative, but very little outside of that conceit works. Roberts knows this and prefers to give audiences a good time rather than engage in a bit of false advertising and not deliver what its promotional materials – or posters – have led viewers to expect. It’s a commendable choice, especially given today’s moviegoing economy, which seems to have no idea how to get audiences in the cinema seats anymore. This is the type of crowd pleaser you’d see at a movie palace all the time, before most of them went to streaming.
A type of film that is completely unapologetic about what it is, and doesn’t care if it will offend or shock moviegoers who dare enter its twisted world, filled with gruesome violence and ear-splitting sound design to make you completely immersed inside a situation no one wants to be in. Who cares if the characters – or story – doesn’t reinvent the wheel when everything around it is so jubilant? It could also act as an important PSA: had he had his vaccines, perhaps Ben wouldn’t have gone on a killing spree. Primate may terrify audiences so much that it could serve as a potent reminder for anyone bitten by an animal to get to the emergency room – urgently, and get their shots. In that regard, one can say that Roberts is saving lives, doing more for human (and animal) health than the current fool running that department in the United States.
That’s the power of cinema, baby.
Primate is now in theaters.
Learn more about the film at the official site for the title.
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