REVIEW: PRIMATE Treads Old Slasher Ground, But Remains Fresh

Let me be honest here: I don’t really know the difference between monkeys and chimpanzees and apes and whatever else. It’s probably a failure of my education somewhere along the way – they’ve all blended together into some sort of general animal kingdom variety (a planet of the apes, if you will). But what I do really know is that they scare me, man. They’re way too smart. They’re way too strong. Their eyes are a little too much like ours. 

And Primate definitely made that fear a little bit worse.

Primate, which had its world premiere as the Opening Night Film of this year’s Fantastic Fest, is about a chimpanzee (not a monkey) named Ben. Ben is gentle, loves teddy bears, wears a red shirt and no pants, and is pretty much the chimp version of Winnie the Pooh… until Ben contracts rabies. And, unfortunately for the family and friends congregated in a beautiful glass house on the edge of a beautiful secluded cliffside, they’re effectively stuck there with this suddenly rabid, violent animal.

It’s a pretty straightforward slasher formula: chimp gets rabies, chimp goes crazy, chimp gorily stalks the young cast. From the first minutes of the movie — a flash forward, skull-ripping vignette — the direction and tone of the tale is rather obvious. But then there are admittedly unique aspects of Primate that really do elevate the whole thing beyond the usual gorefest (but, trust, it is a rather glorious gorefest), thanks to some smart scripting, great creature effects, and a compelling family dynamic.

Academy Award winner Troy Kotsur (CODA) is magnetic as the movie’s deaf father, a successful author. His role adds an early, well-earned stillness to the film, and creates a few moments of legitimate dynamism between him and his young daughters. The family’s long-term relationship with Ben is understandable and believable (although anyone willingly living with a chimp locked up at their house is insane, and I stand by that now more than ever). In the post-screening Q&A, it was mentioned that Kotsur’s part wasn’t initially written to be a specifically deaf role, which seems rather crazy — some of the best, most-heartpounding moments of the film are directly related to his disability.

Ben is portrayed by Miguel Torres Umba, a Colombian movement specialist, in combination with rather stunning practical effects work from England’s Millennium FX (the team behind the recent The Toxic Avenger suit). Ben is wholly believable, sympathetic (at least to me — a guy who immediately left the screening to go let his dog out), and really fucking scary. There were times early in the movie I simply couldn’t tell: Did they get a real chimp? Is this a computer-generated Gollum? Miguel’s performance is really quite incredible (get this guy in the reboot, stat!) and makes Ben feel like a legitimate threat.