Primate review pet chimp gone wild makes for giddy, gory good time

"There's a refreshing lack of subtext and pretension to this week's gory creature feature Primate, a straight-to-the-point riposte to the glum, trauma-heavy horror films we've been enduring of late. Rather than following his genre peers who are busy aiming for the lofty heights of Don't Look Now and Possession, British director Johannes Roberts is happy to give gen Z their very own Shakma, the goofy 1990 schlocker about a baboon driven wild by an experimental drug."

"It's a far better, slicker movie for one, a surgically well-made crowd-pleaser that swaps out baboon for chimp, cleverly turning him from test subject to domesticated pet. At 89-minutes and paced like a rollercoaster, there's little room for life lessons, although the film does make for a stern, grisly reminder of why chimps should not be considered part of the family (something many still don't seem to understand). It's ultimately, and importantly, not Ben's fault."

"Ben being the chimp who became part of a Hawaii-based family when the late matriarch's linguistics work followed her home from the lab. He lives with teenager Erin (Gia Hunter) and her crimewriter father Adam (Troy Kotsur, Coda Oscar winner) in a lux, and crucially remote, cliffside house. They're being visited by absent eldest daughter Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) who has retreated since the death of her mother."

Primate is a gory, fast-paced creature feature that favors schlocky thrills over trauma-heavy pretension. British director Johannes Roberts substitutes a chimp for the classic baboon schlocker dynamic and turns a test subject into a domesticated family pet. Ben the chimp lives with teenager Erin and her crimewriter father Adam in a remote, cliffside Hawaii house after the late matriarch brought him home from the lab. A visit from eldest daughter Lucy and friends becomes violent when Ben, bitten by a mongoose, contracts rabies and begins exhibiting alarmingly odd behaviour. The film runs 89 minutes and delivers tightly paced, crowd-pleasing horror with grisly reminders about keeping chimps out of domestic life.

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