Simply put, Primate is a popcorn movie. It doesn't push any ideas to their full extent and deals with no strong subject matter that would require your full attention. It's just a movie you can sit down for with an overpriced bucket of popcorn and spend 90 minutes away from the outside world.
Luckily, nobody is going into this movie expecting anything revolutionary because that is not what you'll get by any means. This is a simple, gory horror movie with a mildly interesting antagonist. While I did not like this movie, I think you will - or did - given you enter with the right mindset. I knew I was going to write this review so, not only was it a morning viewing for my triple bill that day, I went into it thinking critically. I didn't really enjoy this movie for that reason, as I was trying to engage with the story and the characters more than the filmmakers intended audiences to. This can be seen in a different light as somewhat disrespectful to audiences who are willing to pay full attention; however, if popcorn flicks ceased to exist - opting only for deep character studies such as Hamnet and Sentimental Value - so would cinema, eventually. I say all this to say: most critiques I give for this movie should be taken with a pinch of salt because, while I do still believe in these problems, they don't matter too much to show you should - and likely will - watch this movie.
I'll start with what I did actually enjoy, which starts with the runtime - not the best omen. This movie clocks in at 89 minutes, including credits. This is a perfect runtime as not many movies are this short nowadays. It seems most movies want to drag out their runtimes until there is literally no more to tell, which ultimately ruins the movie as it progresses. For something like this, 90 minutes is all you need and all you'd ask for, making it perfect for a simple and easy trip to the cinema.
Another thing I enjoyed was the actual look of Ben, the monkey. This movie only had the budget of $21-24 million, which may sound like a lot, but it ends up being very little in Hollywood. For reference, the average production budget for a major Hollywood studio is $65-70 million, meaning Primate potentially costs 1/3 of a usual Paramount production. All this is to say, it seemed as if Ben was a man in a suit. For those parameters, he looks and moves absolutely amazingly. There are also many just really cool and menacing moments involving this character, which I actually do worry about. I worry that these few moments will cloud people's perception and memory of this movie after they watch it, causing other people's very real criticisms to be pushed aside.
My final praise for this movie is the few scenes with Adam, the main woman's father. This man is deaf, and occasionally, we'd enter his point of view, completely silencing the entire movie for a moment. This made for some great moments of tension in the third act, where Ben was right behind him, with Adam being completely unaware. The only problem with this is that there wasn't nearly enough of this, as it made for some of the best scenes of the entire movie.
One thing I really hated about this movie is that it did actually hint towards some amount of deeper themes. In the first act, we see some moments that seem relevant to an eventual message about the inherent unpredictability of animals and the dangers of keeping a wild animal as a pet, no matter how much you think it can be trusted. However, it ended up just devolving into the monkey simply getting rabies. There was absolutely no more to it, which destroyed the possibility for these deeper themes because the actions that the monkey did throughout the runtime weren't really him; he was under some psychosis from this infection.
My biggest problem with this movie is simply that almost everybody and every death is caused by their own stupidity. The man at the start, who thought he would be strong enough to push Ben over the edge, leading to him being the first to die. The girl who saw that Ben wasn't acting normal and decided to, even throughout 90% of the movie and after having her leg almost bitten off, treated him completely normal and tried to reason with him. Especially the two who decided to hide from Ben in the closet, the one place where they'd have absolutely no escape if he found them.
I'd like to delve deeper into that one scene, in particular, as it seems to encapsulate all the worst parts of this movie, all in about five minutes. Throughout a lot of this movie, they fall victim to - like a lot of horror movies like this - dragging out every possible second towards any goal to an excruciating degree. This is no better displayed than when these two women had to walk from the pool to the living room. I understand walking carefully to not alert Ben to any loud footsteps; however, that doesn't mean to go as slow as possible, especially with an uncertain - and likely very short - amount of time. Not only do they spend way too long simply walking up these stairs, but they also stop to just look at the greenery for a moment. This isn't due to them hearing any sound or seeing rustling; they just decided to.
Once they finally do get into the living room, not only do they close the door behind them - preventing a quick escape - they end up accidentally alerting Ben by turning on the TV and decide to hide in a closet. First, if they hadn't closed the door behind them, they very easily could've just run out. Second, hiding in a closet is surely the worst place to go, as there is literally no exit if Ben finds them in there. Finally, they do end up getting out and trying to leave and obviously - smartly this time - close the door behind them. The problem with this, however, is that Ben tries to then reopen the door using the handle and wrestles with one of the girls as she holds it closed. Are we forgetting that Ben has proved his strength multiple times before this? Previously, he had thrown a man over the edge of the pool with absolutely no issue, so why can he not overpower this woman trying to stop him from opening the door? Even if we say that maybe Ben was a master of Judo and used that previous man's strength and force against him to throw him over the edge, later we see him rip a man's jaw clean off, also with seemingly no trouble. Surely that takes more strength than simply wrestling this woman to open a door.
To conclude, while there are a lot of issues with this movie, I can't imagine many of them would really matter to you while watching it. This doesn't take itself too seriously, and if you don't either, I'm sure you'll have a fun enough time with it.
No AI was used in writing this article.