There are often valid reasons to break the rules of screenwriting. If a film can succeed in twisting or subverting our expectations, ignoring tried-and-tested patterns can be justified. However, if you create a script that feels like a collection of various ideas borrowed from other stories and toss them together without understanding their purpose, your movie will inevitably suffer for it.
Primate opens with text informing the audience about Hydrophobia – a fear of water due to infection with the rabies virus. Perhaps the film intends to make the audience feel like they’re losing their minds, but instead, the result parallels the larger issue here: things with this film are just kind of bad.
Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) returns home for the first time in a long while to visit her father (Troy Kotsur) and her sister (Gia Hunter). Their deceased mother’s pet chimpanzee (and/or test subject), Ben, is also there, but something is off with him after he is bitten by a mongoose. Ben grows increasingly aggressive, leaving Lucy and her friends isolated in their pool, desperate for a way to escape.
Fans of Stephen King’s Cujo (1983) will find the structure familiar: a pet goes insane from rabies and traps a group of people as it tries to get to them. Unfortunately, Primate spends way too much time trying to give us reasons to care about the characters, only for those details to offer very little to no payoff.
This failure isn’t the fault of the cast; the previously mentioned leads are solid, and the supporting friends (Jessica Alexander, Victoria Wyant, and Benjamin Cheng) do a decent enough job with the material provided. It is the script that ultimately does the film a disservice. Take the concept of “Chekhov’s Gun,” which states that if a story introduces a detail, it must eventually return to that detail in a meaningful way. Primate introduces several elements in its first act that end up being entirely pointless. These aren’t clever red herrings meant to lead us off a scent, but rather superfluous information masquerading as character development. Ultimately, this information fails to inform character behavior or significantly explain the story.
The only elements of the movie that even begin to justify its 90-minute runtime are the practical effects. Miguel Hernando Torres Umba provides a truly impressive performance as Ben. The horrific moments that do occur add some enjoyment, featuring gnarly kills that might have squeamish viewers heading for the exits. It is in these moments — and only these — that the movie finds its footing.
Ultimately, this movie is more frustrating than enjoyable, and it thankfully doesn’t overstay its welcome. I wish the slow first act actually contributed to the narrative in a significant way. Instead, almost none of the opening plot points matter; they are rarely even referenced again. I don’t need a horror movie to be a grand metaphor to be good, but I do request that if a detail is included, it serves a function. We learn their mother died of cancer and was teaching Ben to communicate. Lucy and her best friend wear matching heart pendants. Lucy has been away, her dad works too much, and her sister is annoyed as a result. These details feel ripe for human drama, but if they entice you to see Primate, don’t get your hopes up — that is essentially all you get. Much like this movie, these details are here to just monkey around with, and nothing more.
Primate will be in theaters on January 9.
Rating: 2 out of 5
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