Someone watched the opening to NOPE and decided that should be a full feature. For as terrifying as chimpanzees can be, and the number of real life incidents involving supposedly domesticated chimps, there’s a surprising lack of simian horror. This film reskins Cujo with a chimpanzee, then lampshades how unlikely and outlandish the sequence of events might be… But commits fully to it anyway.
Rather than a CGI chimpanzee, the filmmakers went with a human in an ape suit. A CG chimp à la NOPE would likely be far more convincing visually, but the practical approach allows for visceral encounters and grisly moments that carry genuine weight and physicality. Despite this, the suit is also the film’s weakest link. You can almost see the zipper, and certain moments break immersion entirely when it’s obvious you’re watching a person pretending to be an ape. They should have hired Andy Serkis.
The characters are stock and rote, but they don’t need to be much beyond surface level archetypes and inevitable chimp fodder. They even introduce a few so absurdly obnoxious and unlikable, they might as well have had ‘Victim’ written backwards on their foreheads. The film basically plays as a simian slasher film, with many of the tropes intact including victims condemned by their own idiocy. The film is self-aware enough to play into a sense of camp, and the murderous chimp gets a number of hilarious moments during its rampage. The kills are grisly, reveling in the practical effects, and should satisfy even the discerning gore-hound.
It is dumb, it is gory, yet it works. Whether that is compliment or confession is to the viewer’s discretion. Regardless, if you have to see one killer chimpanzee movie this year, Primate delivers.