The simple distillation of Primate comes down to this:

Rabies-infested chimp stalks and kills pretty college girls.

That could be enough to sell a movie in the ’70s or ’80s. Good thing we’re seemingly back in a period of the animal attack movie making a comeback. Primate comes from writer/director Johannes Roberts (The Strangers: Prey At Night, V/H/S/99). The film follows Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) as she makes her way back home in Hawaii to her family. Alongside her are her friends Kate (Victoria Wyant) and Hannah (Jess Alexander), who are visiting during a break from college. At home are her childhood friend Nick (Benjamin Cheng), her sister Erin (Gia Hunter), and her father, who’s an author and deaf, Adam (Troy Kotsur). Oh, and they have a family member who’s a chimp named Ben (Miguel Torres Umba) from their deceased mother.

From there, Adam has to leave to go to a meeting with a publisher, giving the girls a weekend alone. But before all of that, the film opens with a horrifying scene of Ben feeling sick. Over the course of the film, we learn that Ben has been bitten by a rabid mongoose with rabies (previously thought to have been eradicated in Hawaii). That’s the first bit of small commentary in the film that looks on the surface like it’s just an animal attack film, but there are small things that stand out.

Rabies is not something to mess with and it changes Ben from a happy, loving family member, to basically Michael Myers with more personality. Ben does not mess around in his killing and stalking of the girls (and the eventual college frat boys that get invited to the house).

From the get-go, you know exactly what Primate is all about. Normally, press screenings are pretty muted with people just trying to pay attention to the screen for their reviews and coverage, but this time around, people were whooping and yelling things like “GET THEM BEN” and “BEN NOOOOO!”. That’s the kind of movie that Primate is. If you think its going to happen, it does. But there’s still part of you thinking, “oh, he’s not really going to rip this guy’s face off, right?” and then Ben does it. From the characters to the effects, Primate really is the total package. I was sitting there in the theater pulling my shirt up to chew on because I was so enthralled with the pacing of the scares and just how great Ben looks on camera. This is a guy in a suit. I didn’t notice any CG at all.

Some of the things they do with Ben in this movie made me question how they actually did it on camera. It might be a guy in a suit, but the entire time, you don’t notice that. Ben is delightfully evil once he gets fully rabies-infested. That delightful character work from someone in an ape suit continues to the human characters in the film as well. Everyone has their archetype, but that simple framework does wonders for Primate. Lucy is the final girl, Hannah is the fake friend, Nick is the heartthrob, Adam is the dad who works too much, and the two frat boys that show up are basically the human versions of zoo animals coming in and messing up the house while trying to bang these college girls.

Everything in Primate builds on itself and goes to a conclusion that is heartbreaking and equally thrilling. The entire time, you’re horrified by Ben, but my heart was aching because this was an animal afflicted by one of the worst conditions a living being can go through.

Through it all, Primate is deceptively simple in its plot and characters, but that simplicity works best for it because you’re absolutely enthralled and entertained. Primate is the best blend of satisfying kills, dark humor, and absolute terror for an animal attack movie.

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