‘Primate’: Horror in Hawaii is Both Rabid and Rapid

Most films released in the US are given an MPA rating. In fact, Primate, Paramount’s new horror film which premiered on Friday, earned an R rating for “strong bloody violent content, gore, language, and some drug use.” Yet, Primate also opens with its own audience test; if you can handle the first two minutes of this film, you just might be able to watch the rest of it. Of course, some scenes will require you to glimpse them through trembling fingers raised faceward to help mask what may happen next.

If that is sufficient entreaty for die-hard horror fans to watch 89 minutes of incessant terror, I have several younger friends (Wes Craven and John Carpenter devotees all) who have admitted they are too scared to see Primate. Why, I ask. Because the trailer is too brutal, they respond.  As a matter of principle, I didn’t see the trailer before buying my ticket. I rarely do. Why? For reasons of a different kind of fear. I’m too afraid the trailer will reveal more than I want to know about the film.  Ask yourself how many times you’ve seen a two-minute teaser and said to yourself afterward, “I think I just saw the entire movie.”  

I promise you there is much more to Primate than what the trailer can tease. On the other hand, if you are too frightened by the trailer, then you’ve easily saved ten fingernails or, perhaps, a large bucket of buttered popcorn up-ended in your lap. 

Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) and her bestie, Hannah (Jessica Alexander) are about to fly off to Lucy’s famous father’s home in Hawaii. Lucy’s frenemy, Kate (Victoria Wyant), boards the same plane and steals the middle seat between them. She is tolerated only because Lucy’s hometown crush is Kate’s brother Nick (Benjamin Cheng) who, upon meeting all three of them in the island airport, drives them to Lucy’s spectacular, but secluded house built on top of a steep, lushly tropical cliff. There they are greeted by Lucy’s dad (Troy Kotsur) who is both a famous writer and deaf. He has made his literary career writing books like A Silent Death, A Silent Betrayal, and A Silent Shadow, posters of which hang all about this multi-level home that features an ocean-facing lanai as well as a lower-level infinity pool built right into the face of the cliff. Hiding upstairs is Lucy’s sister Erin (Gia Hunter) who both envies and loathes her older sibling for the freedoms she’s earned by going away to college. What’s more, for the past two years, poor Erin has had to care for her deaf father as well as the family’s pet, a chimpanzee named Ben. You see, Mom, a linguistics scientist, had trained the chimp to use both sign language and an electronic voice pad with which he can “speak.” Thus, without having to explain much of anything, learned Mom and deaf Dad have shared a rather close and caring relationship. And, so, a nonverbal, ASL-trained chimp makes a lot of sense as a pet. Except that, Mom died two years ago of cancer.  

Yep, she’s gone, but Dad is often, too. Despite Lucy’s return from the mainland with friends in tow, Dad has a book tour to attend. He promises to be back home soon to celebrate. But just before leaving his house—one now loud with four young women and a boyfriend ready to throw a homecoming party—Dad checks in on Ben. The chimp, secure in his caged enclosure, has been bitten by a mongoose who lays dead at his feet. Dad bags up the remains of the feral intruder and departs.

Now, if you’ve seen any part of the infamous trailer for Primate, you may have a good idea of what ensues. The chimp has contracted rabies and turns mean, vicious and deftly cunning. The cliffside pool is the only safe harbor for the house party to survive. Apparently, chimpanzees don’t—or can’t—swim. (Who knew? And yet, while the islands are home to thousands of mongooses, hoary bats and wild boars, Hawaii has never had any record of rabies.) 

But let’s not let facts get in the way. This is a horror movie. It really matters not that Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees has become a knife-wielding doll, a devilish clown or a rabid chimpanzee. Director and writer Johannes Roberts delivers unrelenting terror with every literal turn of the camera. There are jump-scares, nearly imperceptible reflections in distant mirrors, heavy breathing only slightly louder than the richly orchestrated score that anticipates the next scare, the next escape, the next surprise, the next scream. The action is unrelenting and every attempt to escape the situation becomes more foolish than the last. Primate is, indeed, the nightmare we all share. One can never escape the boogeyman, especially in pajama-clad legs that step on quicksand in a dreamscape that is totally unfamiliar. And for the sake of blood-spewing injuries or bodies left twisted in puddles of dark red goo, who needs a machete or chainsaw? Apparently, one chimpanzee can do it all.

And, therein, may lie the film’s major fault. Scene after scene, the chimpanzee employed by the filmmakers reveals ever inconsistent details of a costume fitted for a very small actor. Ben is played by Miguel Torres Umba. One might applaud director Roberts for not using an animatronic or CGI primate, but not for including shots wherein the chimp’s head is much too large for his body or his face is no longer freckled but now menacingly dark or his teeth are splayed one way and then exquisitely aligned with Dracula-like fangs the next. IMDb credits a Make Up Department of nearly 65 artists. Let’s agree, however, that it may be comforting during horrendous scenes of cinematic gore to spot what looks like a simple everyday zipper running down the back of the murderous monster’s costume. 

Horror movies are rarely lauded for developing sweeping character arcs or defining the subtle aspirations of teenagers who have nothing better to do than spend a weekend in a haunted house. Primate is no exception. Four girls and one boyfriend just want to have fun, especially when Dad’s not home. (By the way, two other teen males, met earlier in the airport, have been invited to the house for far more explicit reasons than smoking pot or chugging beer.) So, really, Primate fits snuggly in the nowhere-to-hide worlds of Elm Street or Crystal Lake. And that’s okay. Horror films are all about vanquishing evil once and for all. (That is, despite having to create box office fodder for five or more sequels.) Horror films are not about whether Lucy and her sister can channel their late mother’s love of language by training a young, new chimp to care for their aging, deaf father. 

(Oh wait, maybe Primate has some legs to run on…?)

C. Prentiss Orr is a Pittsburgh-based writer who covers film, live theater, and other topics for Entertainment Central. He is the author of the books The Surveyor and the Silversmith and Pittsburgh Born, Pittsburgh Bred.

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