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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nIt\u2019s time once again for that magical set of releases on the cinematic calendar: January Horror! Unable to get a Halloween release, unable to compete in blockbuster season, and unable to dominate a random weekend anywhere else on the calendar, January Horror movies are released at a time when their biggest competition is leftover holiday blockbusters and awards-season darlings. Studios are banking on audiences not wanting movies that are popular and\u2026 good, so maybe they\u2019ll settle for some cheap thrills. In other words, the month is a dumping ground for bad horror movies. \u201cPrimate\u201d is indeed bad enough to belong in January, though I\u2019ll at least allow it the faint compliment that it\u2019s pretty decent \u201cfor\u201d January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The film takes place at a cliffside (meaning somebody is definitely going over that cliff) mansion in Hawaii. College student Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) is coming home to visit her father Adam (Troy Kotsur) and sister Erin (Gia Hunter). Along for the trip are her good friend Kate (Victoria Wyant) and lousy friend Hannah (Jessica Alexander), as well as Kate\u2019s brother Nick (Benjamin Cheng). Lucy isn\u2019t just happy to see the humans in her family, she\u2019s also happy to see Ben, a chimpanzee adopted by her late linguistics-expert mother, who communicates with both sign language (with the deaf Adam) and an electronic pad with an artificial voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Adam has to go out of town and Ben has been behaving strangely, so veterinarian Dr. Lambert (Rob Delaney) will have to swing by the house, but other than that, the kids have run of the place for a few days. Hannah might even invite over some party bros (Charlie Mann and Tienne Simon) she met on the plane. There\u2019s just one problem: Ben has been infected with rabies. Everyone in the house is now in danger from the increasingly-unstable chimp. And as we learn from the opening sequence (because of course this is a movie that starts with a horrific scene and then flashes back to \u201c36 Hours Earlier\u201d), it\u2019s mortal danger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The appeal of the movie lies in its chimpanzee antagonist, and to that end, the film actually fares quite well. Effects that go into Ben reportedly include puppetry, animatronics, motion capture, and a physical performance by actor Miguel Torres Umba. It\u2019s more complex than a Halloween costume, but doesn\u2019t take the shortcut of computer-generated artificiality. I never had any problems with visual phoniness or the uncanny valley, at least no more than with any real-life primate. I really was all set for Ben to be a memorable slasher villain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then the movie did something with Ben that greatly detracted from all that hard work: it made the character unnaturally smart. I\u2019m not talking about the early scenes of the chimp functioning in the household. I\u2019m talking about how, if the character\u2019s homicidal tendencies are driven by rabies, then he\u2019s a crazed, full-steam-ahead killing machine, and I\u2019m afraid of that. But the film gives Ben the presence of mind to taunt his victims and get creative in his attacks, and it\u2019s just not \u201crabid\u201d behavior. It\u2019s the behavior of a standard movie slasher, and by the end of the movie, I couldn\u2019t see Ben as anything more than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t want to dismiss the idea of a killer primate movie entirely, with the threat of an unfamiliar species posing unique dangers. But the movie doesn\u2019t capitalize on that potential, instead offering up dull January Horror fare with a killer that happens to be a chimp and kills that are only impressive when they can only be committed by a chimp. And the lazily-written human characters certainly can\u2019t carry this movie. If the makers of \u201cPrimate\u201d liked fleshing out their characters as much as they liked the chimp ripping flesh off of them, there might have been a recommendable movie here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: C<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPrimate\u201d is rated R for strong bloody violent content, gore, language, and some drug use. Its running time is 89 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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