Johannes Roberts's chimp-based horror movie Primate starts promisingly, and features unsettling visual FX (an actual actor in a suit, rather than CGI), but the script is just too familiar (and too dumb) to really work.
College student Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) and her best friend Kate (Victoria Wyant) are headed home to Hawaii after finals. Kate has also invited the free-wheeling Hannah (Jessica Alexander). They are met at the airport by Kate's brother Nick (Benjamin Cheng), who takes them to Lucy's family house. She is reunited with her deaf father, successful author Adam (Troy Katsur), and her younger sister Erin (Gia Hunter), as well as the family chimp, Ben (Miguel Torres Umba).
Adam needs to leave for a few days for a book promotion, but promises to spend time with his daughters when he returns. Unfortunately, Ben has tangled with a rabid mongoose and has become sick. An attempt to administer antibiotics fails, and he escapes, growing worse and more violent as the night goes on. The only safe place is the swimming pool...
Primate opens with a flash-forward to the first brutal killing (a tired screenwriter's trick to get things moving faster), before introducing the characters, and for a minute, it looks as if they might be interesting. Oscar-winner Troy Kotsur (CODA) provides an interesting center, a deaf author who lives in a glorious Hawaiian house, shared with a friendly (under normal circumstances) chimp. Among the younger people, there are rivalries, friendships, crushes, and grudges, that could have been interesting.
But as soon as the brutal killings start, most of that stuff is simply forgotten. Characters act in ill-advised ways, and they keep making sudden loud noises that startle the poor chimp. They spend most of the movie trying to get their hands on a working phone to call 911, but, annoyingly, they fail time and time again. (The first 911 call that gets through goes almost hilariously wrong.)
The characters waiting in the safety of the pool recalls the characters of Cujo waiting in the safety of the car to avoid a rabies-infected dog. Characters tiptoeing around a dark house and hiding in a closet recall dozens of other horror movies. But the most annoying cliché comes near the end, and by that time, most cinephiles will have given up on Primate anyway.
Paramount's Blu-ray release includes a Dolby Atmos audio mix, an English audio description track, and many language tracks (all 5.1 Dolby Digital), as well as a commentary track by director Johannes Roberts and producer Walter Hamada. There are optional subtitles in over a dozen languages. Bonus featurettes include "Primal Terror: Directing Primate" (9:29), "New Blood: The Faces of Primate" (10:10), "Creating Ben" (11:22), and "Designing Paradise" (7:01).
