THB #790: Primate
Primate is a weird experience to write about.
I was there for the premise. Family monkey goes insane, threatens to kill the family and anyone else it can. Okay. It feels a bit like it could be a cousin to M3GAN, but the monkey, as it works out, really has no personality. It’s not anthropomorphic, even though monkeys are the closest animals to humans and the monkey signs and has a long relationship with the family… but ultimately, just a monkey who will be going through a bad time.
The other version of this movie is to really let the animal be an animal, with the humans showing insight and cleverness in dealing with a species that has its strengths and weaknesses. Nope. Not that either.
Layered into this story are a whole series of gimmicks. Some are on the nose, others will become intentional distractions, and others yet will be grossly underfed. Thing is, the movie is wanting for more gimmicks that are not there and fewer of the gimmicks that are there.
For instance - and this will be a minor spoiler - the lead girl (no idea if she is a virgin), Lucy (played by the what-was-that-name? Johnny Sequoyah) comes into the movie wearing a half-heart. The other half belongs to Kate (Victoria Wyant). Are they lesbian girlfriends who fell in love while they were away from home but Lucy hasn’t told her family yet? No. Turns out they are just best friends. Lucy has a crush on the boy from home (Benjamin Cheng’s perpetually shirtless Nick, whose living arrangements still make no sense to me at all). At which point I wonder… what the fuck was that all about?
I don’t need to the story or characters to be anything of my own imagination. But if you are going to send me down a rabbit hole, there better be some reason for it. Maybe our lead started dating her best friend when away and then realized she was in love with a boy when she got home, creating - please, someone produce this movie! - character tension. Who knows? It could be anything. But it’s absolutely nothing here. distraction.
Here is one that isn’t a spoiler… Oscar-winner Troy Kotsur plays Daddy. As you will recall, Mr. Kotsur is deaf. This fact does pay off… but not until there is a gag based around it very briefly late in the 3rd act. It’s all lovely to talk about able-less casting and all, but the fact that he is deaf opens up all kinds of interesting character stuff. It this why they have the monkey? Is the communication with the monkey his specialty that he is especially gifted in because of his deafness. In the movie, he seems to be a novelist and he seems anxious to make some money, but these are dead ends also.
I will say, the movie is literally 89 minutes long, which is as short as a movie can be and be distributed widely outside of the U.S. (Maybe that has changed, but it used to be the rule and is often why animated films have shorts attached.) So it could be that 20 or more minutes of character and story development are sitting on the proverbial and no longer existent cutting room floor.
Again… the detail of what else the movie is are not something I am committed to… I am not the filmmaker.
But, 3 sexy girls and a sexy boy… nothing remotely sexy in the entire movie.
Outsider girl who is an edgy rival to our virginal lead… nothing really done with that.
Underaged sister in the house with the girls who have all been away… nothing there.
Dead mother… how? No idea. Why doesn’t it matter? Because they did nothing with it.
One of the funnier bits in the movie is when the sexy idiots that the girls met on the plane to the island show up, thinking they might get sex and wander around the house, not knowing there is a rabid killer monkey lurking. The dumber of the 2 - blonde boy, Charlie Mann’s Drew - encounters the monkey as he lies on one of the girls’ bed. His stupidity is kind of charming. However, he plays the scene from the start as being afraid of the monkey. He has no idea it is rabid or dangerous. So why doesn’t he have fun with the idea of monkey, underestimating the danger, playing like a dumb guy would for a couple minutes before it gets unpleasant? I don’t know.
But here is the thing… the movie is well shot (dark, but good). It’s reasonably well acted by all… if anyone has big movie star energy besides Kotsur, it is well hidden. But they aren’t bad actors. Music is good. Monkey is well done. The violence is mostly very convincing. An actor named Miguel Torres Umba plays Ben, The Monkey… and it is pretty remarkable performance. I don’t know if it was digitally enhanced or not. That’s impressive.
Johannes Roberts is the director and co-writer. Johannes the director… good… above serviceable. The tension is tense, even if it is not well set up by the script. And that brings us to the other Johannes. Honestly, repeating myself… the movie has so many false strings and so many missing strings that I musty assume that it is a function of editing… which is not to say The Editor.
It really feels like the movie was done, ran 2 hours and 5 minutes, and just wasn’t playing the way the producers and maybe Johannes wanted. So they cut it down to the bare minimum… meaning, that they had an hour long rabid monkey movie and filled the other half hour with the leanest and meanest they could and decided the audience would leave happy if they just got monkey maims and kills enough to have a good laugh and a scream.
(Sidebar: Johannes Roberts made a Resident Evil movie in 2021 after a 20 year career making small horror. But it made me look at the list of Resident Evil movies, especially with the genius-boy Zach Cregger making one now. Holy shit! There were 5 Resident Evils that Paul W.S. Anderson directed and wrote or just wrote from 2002 - 2016. They all starred Milla Jovovich. Roberts did an origin story, RE: Welcome To Racoon City in 2021. Cregger’s is due in September of this year.)
I didn’t mind watching the movie. I was amused to see that they hired a cut-rate Michael Kosta to be the first victim. The movie has one of the great, “we know this makes no sense so we are going to call it out very openly and hope no one notices” screenplay gags ever (involving the location). There is enough there that it fulfills its intentions. But it could have been so much better. A few more kinks… a few laughs… a clearer clock…. it could have been one of those movies that is fun to watch over and over again. It’s not quite that. But it’s a movie opening January 9… what did you expect?
Until tomorrow…