Michael Myers. Freddy Krueger. Ghostface. All iconic slasher villains who made their mark by hunting and killing terrified teens. Now, with the film “Primate,” a new name has joined their ranks: Ben.
As you probably guessed, Ben is the titular chimpanzee at the center of Johannes Roberts’ new horror film (is Ben kind of a dumb name for a chimp? Yes, but let’s forget about that for now). Ben, once a kind and loving animal, was adopted by a family in Hawaii to live alongside them as a strange mix of brother and pet. But when he’s bitten by a rabid mongoose, he turns into a psychotic killer with intelligence to rival Hannibal Lecter (or perhaps his victims are just stupid — who’s to say?).
Ben is the true calling card of “Primate,” which otherwise is a fairly standard slasher, filled with forgettable performances but some truly gnarly gore and practical effects. Ben himself is the most impressive of those practical effects, and luckily, Ben is the real star of “Primate.” Because when the killer chimp isn’t on screen — pounding his chest or engaging in a little light face ripping — the movie suffers for it.
The opening sequence of “Primate” quickly proves to any skeptics that gore-wise, at least, the filmmakers know what they’re doing. Then we head right into set up, which, thankfully, doesn’t take all that long. We meet Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah), a college student headed back home to Hawaii for the first time since her mother passed away. She’s accompanied by friends Kate (Victoria Wyant) and Hannah (Jessica Alexander), and they’re all staying with Lucy’s father, Adam (Troy Kotsur), her little sister Erin (Gia Hunter), and, of course, Ben.
There are minor grievances between different characters that pop up here — Erin is upset with Lucy for being gone for so long, and both girls are upset with their father for having to leave on a business trip immediately after Lucy gets home (the necessary plot device to get him out of the house). Lucy has a long-standing crush on Kate’s brother Nick (Benjamin Cheng), but he’s far more interested in making out with Hannah. This is all fairly inconsequential as we lead up to Ben’s rampage, which begins about 30 minutes into the film’s 89-minute runtime. Thank god.
When compared with other slashers, what “Primate” is missing is great performances on the victim side of things. None of the actors are bad, but the characters themselves are so focused on survival that all opportunities for fun are left to the wayside. While I’m mostly appreciative of the minimal set up, the writers (Roberts and Ernest Riera) don’t capitalize on the little they have. Hannah’s status as the lone outsider of this group never comes to fruition, and the love triangle between Hannah, Nick, and Lucy peters out almost immediately. Once the action starts, the characters lose all sense of individuality. The actors’ performances are solid and physical, but there’s nothing else for the audience to hold onto.
“Primate” becomes less of a two-hander — that is, a stand-off between the killer and one final girl — than other slashers because Ben completely steals the show. Similarly to the movie speeding through the human setup, “Primate” does not linger too long on Ben’s perceived humanity at the beginning of the film. He breaks bad pretty quickly, and is so maliciously clever that it’s easy not to see him as an innocent victim of a rabid mongoose. He pretends to be scared and pitiful before breaking people’s arms. He laughs manically after throwing someone off of a cliff (and really, who builds their infinity pool on the side of a cliff?). In the best kill of the film, he gets a little kinky with his victim before ripping his jaw clean off. Like all good slasher villains, Ben likes a little drama.
Ben is played by Miguel Torres Umba, a Colombian movement specialist in a practical suit built by the company Millenium FX. The film takes place mostly at night, and Roberts is clever about how much he lets us see of Ben at any given time, but the total effect is incredibly impressive. And the fact that Ben is there, on the set, actually interacting with the other actors in the scene creates a sense of reality that elevates “Primate” beyond its premise and script.