Primate (dir. Johannes Roberts)

By: Adam Freed

Buried somewhere beneath the abhorrently predictable execution of Paramount’s Primate is a well intended warning to the small percentage of people who feel that keeping exotic wild animals as pets is a keen idea. It’s unfortunate that this worthwhile reminder should come in the form of such a cliché-ridden horror film. The scanty premise of Johannes Roberts’ (V/H/S/99, 47 Meters Down) film follows a recently reunited family who live in the luxury of their Hawaiian cliffside home on the back of their father’s prominent writing career. Family patriarch and widower Adam, played by Academy Award winner Troy Kotsur (CODA), provides the film with his unique form of performance gravity as a deaf actor, who spends most of the film unexplainably written out of the immediate action.  In Adam’s absence, audiences are left in the presence of his two dreadfully underwritten daughters Lucy and Erin, played by Johnny Sequoyah (Dexter: New Blood) and Erin (Gia Hunter) respectively.  The pair of helpless heroines are joined by houseguests Hannah, Kate and Nick to round out a cast of mind-numbingly obtuse characters left to tend to Ben, the family’s pet chimpanzee, who once acted as the focal point of their late mother’s linguistic primate experiments.  What could possibly go wrong?

As absurd as this premise sounds, it is shadowed only by the monotony of its insultingly tepid execution.  Primate is a stark reminder of the realities of a new year and that the January/February dumping ground for studio films, known lovingly as “Dumpuary” is officially in full swing.  Paramount has found a perfect film in Primate to bury early in the new year in search of audiences looking to ride out a winter storm at the theaters.  While Johannes Roberts should be commended for his film’s use of practical effects in lieu of the all too common poorly rendered CG, the reality is that Ben the chimp doesn’t look all that good, or that scary. Even mired in its gory genre nonsense, getting the chimp right had to be job number one for the production, a box that even the most forgiving of graders may leave unmarked.

Primate opens its threadbare narrative with a catastrophic event (think the opening of Jaws) only to reset the timeline back by 36 hours in order to attend to the common requirements of penning the first act of any film.  Despite its delicious island backdrop, the film’s opening act spends far too much time creating a backstory that works to prove itself mostly irrelevant. Primate is not a good film, but more damning, is that it isn’t even representative of quality within a genre that gets away with an awful lot of tropes and silliness in pursuit of brutality-based escapism. Just as potential wild animal owners should resist the temptation to bring nature’s undomesticable creatures into their homes, audiences are best to steer clear of allowing Primate into their hearts.

Target Score 3/10 -  While Johannes Roberts’ Primate should be commended for its use of practical effects, the film’s premise and execution are completely unforgivable.  Juxtaposed to the majestic tropical landscape of Hawaii, Primate proves itself to be both laughably idiotic and repulsively gruesome.