- Director: Johannes Roberts
- Screenplay: Johannes Roberts, Ernest Riera
- Cast: Johnny Sequoyah, Jessica Alexander, Victoria Wyant, Gia Hunter, Benjamin Cheng, Troy Kotsur
- Cinematography: Stephen Murphy
- Editing: Peter Gvozdas
- Score: Adrian Johnston
- Genre: Natural horror
- Runtime: 89 minutes
‘Primate‘ has the bare bones of a story: a rabid chimpanzee goes berserk on a Hawaiian island, attacking anyone in his path.
Ben, the savage simian, is of a higher intelligence than your average chimp and has been trained to communicate through a tablet. The idea of bumping off the science project is off the cards when the shit hits the fan. What is the most reasonable course of action in such dire circumstances is greeted with expletives from a member of the chimp’s adoptive family.
The exposition is of the very minimum, done so via newspaper clippings during the opening credits. The cast mainly comprises clueless teenagers scrambling for an escape. It’s hard to feel sorry for these imbeciles; they’ve overlooked the nearby firepit as a possible means of protection; instead they’re monkeying around trying to recover a phone from inside a building. The locale where the bedlam unfolds is nice but it’s impossible to sully the beauty of Hawaii. Placing a few poolside lamps here and there for decoration doesn’t make a difference.
If Ben’s a chimp, then the writers are chumps. Johannes Roberts (who also directs) has creature feature experience; the ‘47 Meters Down‘ series, with killer sharks. There’s only so much you can do with a crazed monkey, however creepy he may be, with globules of saliva dripping from his gob. The jump scares are telegraphed a mile away. There’s a high gore factor to grab the audience’s waning attention, with some really gruesome, wince-inducing deaths. The whole thing is utterly bananas.
My rating: 4 / 10
SilverScreen 