A rabid chimp runs amok in a posh house in director Johannes Roberts’ new horror. Check out our Primate review… In a 12-month period surprisingly stuffed with Stephen King adaptations, along comes Primate – a hairy slasher that feels like a riff on one of the novelist’s classic 1970s/80s horror tales. Or, to put it ... Primate review | You’ll go ape for this killer chimp horror
A rabid chimp runs amok in a posh house in director Johannes Roberts’ new horror. Check out our Primate review…
In a 12-month period surprisingly stuffed with Stephen King adaptations, along comes Primate – a hairy slasher that feels like a riff on one of the novelist’s classic 1970s/80s horror tales. Or, to put it in a more straightforward way: it’s Cujo with a rabid chimpanzee instead of a canine.
It’s a creature feature from director Johannes Roberts (who co-writes with Ernest Riera), the maker of such genre pieces as killer hoodie horror F and Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City. Pared-back and gleefully violent, Primate feels as much like an evolutionary throwback as its titular killer; its jingle-jangle synth score evokes John Carpenter’s Halloween, and its simple plotline avoids much of modern horror’s metaphors and occasionally repetitive explorations of trauma.
The short version of the plot: Roberts takes a bunch of picturesque young adults to an expensive-looking house in Hawaii and chops them up. (That the murderous simian, clad in a red t-shirt throughout, often wears more clothes than much of the cast of 20-somethings almost feels like a running gag.)
The slightly long version is that protagonist Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) has flown back to her modernist clifftop home in Hawaii to spend the summer with her hearing-impaired novelist father, Adam (Oscar-winner Troy Kotsur) and her younger sister Erin (Gia Hunter). She’s also brought along a couple of friends for the break: her bestie Kate (Victoria Wyant) and less-than-best-friend Hannah (Jessica Alexander). The twist is that Anna’s late mother was a linguistics professor, and was researching communication with chimpanzees right before she died of cancer at some point before the opening credits.
All of which explains why there’s a chimp named Ben hiding under Erin’s bed when Lucy arrives. “This is Ben,” Lucy explains to Hannah, who’s understandably startled that there’s a t-shirt-clad ape roaming the house. Initially, Ben seems as benign as any other household pet – but then a freak nibble from a feral mongoose leaves him infected with rabies and baying for blood.
Adding to the retro atmosphere, Primate’s animal effects appear to be almost entirely practical: Ben bears all the hallmarks of a traditional performer in a suit – which is the opposite of a criticism. As the knuckle-dragging terror rampages around the house, railing at televisions displaying Dora The Explorer and pummeling everyone he sees (we’ve all been there), the action benefits hugely from having a flesh-and-blood actor (albeit clad in latex and fur) physically wrecking the fixtures and fittings.
Where even the best CGI tends to lack weight and friction, Ben feels like a physical force of nature; a creature whose sinewy strength and aggression far outstrips his diminutive size. Full credit to Miguel Torres Umba, whose performance as Ben places him in the same proud lineage as the teeth-baring troglodytes from 2001: A Space Odyssey and beyond.
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Roberts doesn’t skimp on the gore, either, and some of his murderous set-pieces are likely to have audiences alternately giggling nervously and gasping in disgust. The director also makes the most of his single location, adding to the tension with long, ominous closeups of Ben leering through obscured glass or twitching the occasional net curtain.
The result is a fascinating fusion of bygone genres. There’s a hint of the nature-strikes-back cycle of flicks that swam in Jaws’ wake in the 1970s; the straightforward slasher mayhem of the post-Halloween era, overlaid with the glossy look of a more modern teen drama. Even the use of rabies as a plot device harks back a good few decades, to the likes of the aforementioned Cujo (adapted from King’s novel in 1983), 1988 Italian shocker Primal Rage, or British TV series The Mad Death (1983).
It’s all thoroughly entertaining, even if – much like the slashers it recalls – the characters and plot tend to take a bit of a backseat to all the bloodletting. There are dangling story threads involving Paul’s writing career and other interpersonal tensions that don’t really go anywhere. What all this means, though, is that Primate remains resolutely focused on horror, suspense and a smattering of black comedy; in its lack of subtext or subplots, it’s as aggressive and lean as the antagonist in its title.
“Who the fuck has a pet chimp?” a character asks. It’s a valid question. After Primate, sales of domesticated simians are sure to plummet.
Primate is out in UK cinemas from the 30th January.
