Primate

Any movie that features a rabid ape ripping off Rob Delaney’s face in the first five minutes has confidently announced that there’s more where that came from. And Primate does, indeed, deliver plenty of squishy gore along the way, as well as a lot more ripping-off, mainly from John Carpenter’s Halloween.

The human characters tend to behave like such idiots that the mad-monkey murders feel like a win for evolution, but even viewers who roll their eyes at the teenagers constantly bumbling into harm’s way may find themselves tossing their popcorn in the air when that harm finally happens.

College student Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) returns home to Hawaii for the first time since the death of her mother, and that passing has clearly taken a toll on the whole family: dad Adam (Oscar winner Troy Kostsur) has thrown himself into work, and little sister Erin (Gia Hunter) feels lonely and neglected. Rounding out the clan is Ben (Miguel Torres Umba in a motion capture role), the chimpanzee to whom Lucy’s mother, a linguistics professor, was teaching English; occupying a role in the family unit somewhere between pet and sibling, Ben is pleased at Lucy’s return, until a mongoose gets into Ben’s cage and bites him.

That mongoose was rabid, and despite Adam’s insistence rabies doesn’t exist in Hawaii, Ben starts behaving erratically and foaming at the mouth. (The failure of U.S. public health institutions to track a deadly disease almost counts as this horror movie’s social commentary, however coincidental it may be.) With Adam away for work, it’s up to Lucy and Erin — and Lucy’s friends Kate (Victoria Wyant), Nick (Benjamin Cheng), and Hannah (Jessica Alexander) — to survive Ben’s increasing wrath. And with Ben having bitten a chunk out of Erin’s thigh, the clock is ticking to get her to a hospital.

Director Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down) isn’t interested in subtlety here; lots of movies will show a character falling off a cliff, but only the most dedicated to sleazy thrills will offer a close-up point-of-impact shot. For all his reveling in viscera, and for all the idiotic choices that Roberts and co-screenwriter Ernest Riera craft for their young characters, Primate nonetheless becomes an effective chiller, crafting reasons why Lucy and company can’t just go off and get help, and turning the Hawaiian scenery from breathtaking to foreboding. (That cliffside infinity pool seems great until everyone is trapped in it by a water-averse Ben, leaving them no other path of escape.)

Editor Peter Gvozdas (The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It) masterfully plays out the sequences of Ben on the rampage, building tension out of this sweet, docile creature turned unhinged force of nature; it’s a compliment to say that Primate often feels like a feature film crafted from the scary-monkey flashback in Nope. Sound designer Dan Kenyon (Barbie) efficiently employs Adam’s deafness for a terrifying sequence in which the character is unaware of something horrible transpiring just behind him.

Primate doesn’t necessarily hold up to a lot of scrutiny, and as follow-up projects for recent Academy Award winners go, it’s just a few ticks above last year’s Love Hurts, which squandered the talents of both Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose. But for sheer horror pleasure and monster-movie squirms, this silly monkey movie delivers the goods.

Director: Johannes Roberts
Screenwriter: Johannes Roberts & Ernest Riera
Cast: Johnny Sequoyah, Jessica Alexander, Troy Kotsur, Victoria Wyant, Gia Hunter, Benjamin Cheng, Charlie Mann, Tienne Simon, Miguel Torres Umba
Producers: Walter Hamada, John Hodges, Bradley Pilz
Executive producers: Vicki Dee Rock, Nathan Samdahl, Johannes Roberts, Pete Chiappetta, Anthony Tittanegro, Andrew Lary
Director of photography: Stephen Murphy
Production design: Simon Bowles
Editing: Peter Gvozdas
Music: Adrian Johnston
Sound design: Dan Kenyon, sound designer/supervising sound editor
Production companies: Paramount Pictures, Domain Entertainment, 18Hz Productions
In English
89 minutes