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Primate 2025 has a certain background aspect not so common, mainly about the history of rabies and that alone sets a creepy tone, and then the actual story kicks in and everything about it feels rushed because this is the kind of movie that gave you almost 70% of the context during the first trailer so making it something special is not an easy task. The movie builds around a chimp named Ben who gets infected and turns into this sadistic monster inside a cliffside glass house in Hawaii, and I spent a good chunk of the movie looking away because the gore goes way past what this kind of story needs, they really went over board in my opinion, consider Im a guy who likes horror and slasher movies. You can tell right away the script is leaning hard on these gruesome moments to cover up how thin everything underneath actually is, like when Ben just rips people face off. Dressed in human clothes, a little shirt, holding a teddy bear, which makes the whole thing even more unsettling when he starts holding everyone hostage and tearing apart anyone who gets in his way. I was not really interested on this one although decided to gave it a try just to unwind after a packed week, I havent been posting lately that frequent so wanted something that gives me back the writting bug, but instead I got a chimp toying with people like he is auditioning for a serial killer role, which stops feeling like a horror movie and starts feeling like torture somewhere around thirty minute into the movie.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33028778/
- Platform: PARAMOUNT+
I have to admit that the house and stage where everything happens is probably the best thing about this movie, this massive glass house built directly into a cliff in Hawaii, I will give the production team full credit because the place looks incredible on screen. Troy Kotsur plays Adam, a famous deaf novelist and the owner of Ben, and he communicates through sign language while Ben uses a custom tablet soundboard his linguist mother taught him to use so he could communicate more directly, honestly the setup of the movie is not bad at all, I wouldnt consider this a total failure, still a cool one time watch. Sound design is very speciall for the movie, one good example is when Adam returns to the house the sound drops out completely to put you in his world for a moment, showing you how he cannot hear the chimp stalking around behind him, its the pure silence that adds so much tension to the scene and almost because the default for when Ben is stalking his pray. Kotsur is great in the role and the sign language element gives the movie a personality that none of the other characters come close to matching making them just another of Ben's victim, which then makes it even more frustrating that the script treats him like a side dish instead of the main course, the movie should have put him as the main target. Johnny Sequoyah as Lucy does what she can with a thin role and Jessica Alexander as Hannah gives the movie a touch of attitude that keeps things watchable although nothing that you going to remember after two weeks of watching, also none of the young cast gets enough material to make you actually care when Ben starts picking them off.
After the story starts to unfold there is the argument that turns this movie down, Ben is supposed to have rabies, a disease associated with neurological dysfunction, abnormal behavior, aggression, weakness, poor coordination, paralysis, and sometimes hydrophobia. Instead of acting like a severely sick animal, he moves like a ninja, thinks like a chess player, and keeps setting up elaborate little gotcha scenes that make zero sense for the premise. He figures out how to use a key fob to lock someone inside a car while he works on them through the window and he types messages on his tablet before attacking his owner, which is a cool image for about three seconds before you realize none of it tracks with what the movie told you about rabies since the beginning. Then there is the pool standoff, in my opinion should have been the tension centerpiece, teenagers trapped in the water because the chimp cannot swim, except the movie already established he is afraid of water so it just ignores that and has him hang from light fixtures above the pool to reach people instead. For the most part the movie felt contradictory to Ben situation but if you just put your brain in copilot then I would say that the cast still made it watchable for the most part, until the kills became so disturbing I had to just look away for the 50% when things starts to go down. There is an specific scene where there was some kinda hope when Drew just crawls into a room thinking he might make it out, only for Ben to find him and pin him down to then rip his jaw completely off, this and the rip face move were his favorite kills. Its like fear is not enough and the movie also wants you to feel hopeless for everyone, similar those scenes where people get trap into a burning house with no place to go, but in this case its just Ben creating all this environment of frustration also lets not forget Be is supposed to be an infected sick animal, but the movie keeps treating him like a slasher villain who is stronger, smarter, and more coordinated than everyone around him. I get that these people are panicking and obviously are not trained to handle a chimp under these circumstances, but the writing makes them feel so helpless that it stops being tense and starts feeling rigged. The movie keeps finding ways for Ben to outplay them, ambush them, and survive long past the point where the humans should have had some kind of advantage. On top of that, the chimp effect are kinda meh specially during this dark scenes, during close ups and especially during the face ripping gore, Ben can look too much like a guy in a suit with grime on his face, and once the illusion breaks, whatever tension is left starts to disappear.
I feel those who watch this at the theater because might feel tricked out, the movie could have been something, because you have a pretty unhinged pitch here that could have gone in so many interesting directions, one of them just give more context about why Ben situation is so special at the same time contradictory in terms of his habilities and instead it sits there being a sadistic mess. There have been many other similar movies but this time with a chimp and a pool instead of say a dog and some other location. I did some search online see if this movie is a reboot or inspire on something similar and found a 1983 movie name Cujo, similar premise of a Dog that got rabies and tend to trap people in a car, probably wont be easy to find it online but for you to care about the victims there is this need of context and time developing the charaters that here feels fake. On top that animal attacks are not strange or anything new, considering the high probabilities when you keep a animal that is usually not a human companion, this is not your average French Poodle, and those stories are terrifying in a way that feels earned because of the actual unpredictability and raw strength of most of these animals, but for the most part is because when a case like this hits the news they just keep digging for context to make things more interesting until there is nothing else to it and becomes old news, this movie doesnt really takes such direction and instead gives Ben the brain of a cartoon villain. Adam has this whole thing where he raised Ben like family, practically a son and yet when push comes to shove he shows almost no real internal conflict about having to go after him, which strips out the emotional core the movie really needed like an internal conflict inside Ben something that might hold him back and at least gives the humans a chance. You get moments where characters are hiding in a closet while Ben sniffs around outside and the tension almost works, then someone stupidly steps on a remote and blasts the TV and the whole thing goes to shit, its almost like the movie wants to be a smart creature feature and a family grief story at the same time and it fumbles both completely.
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