“Primate” Goes Bananas
English literature teaches us that every story fits into a certain type of conflict. The four main conflict distinctions are man vs. society, self, man, and nature. As humanity has grown and adapted, more types of conflicts have arisen, like man vs. technology. However, most of the stories we tell as humans can be boiled down to one of these basic principles. We are animals at the end of the day. It’s survival above all else that we eternally work toward, even if fighting for survival now looks a lot different than it did for the cave people. Johannes Robert’s’ Primate takes us back to the simple struggle of man vs. nature.
courtesy of Paramount
A lot of people grow up with a family pet, but Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) and her sister, Erin (Gia Hunter), didn’t have a dog. They had a chimpanzee named Ben (physically portrayed by Miguel Torres Umba, vocally portrayed by Ben Pronsky) and they saw him as one of the family. Their mother, who has passed away by the time the film begins, was a linguist who wanted to study the development of language between chimps and humans. Ben has lived among the family for years, but the absence of Lucy and Erin’s mom can be felt. Lucy has returned home from college with her childhood friend Kate (Victoria Wyant) and Kate’s new bestie, Hannah (Jessica Alexander). When Lucy’s dad (Troy Kotsur) announces he’s leaving for the weekend, the girls, and Kate’s brother, (Benjamin Cheng), throw a party. Things get out of hand when they discover there’s something wrong with Ben.
Primate is a film that’s simply about survival. Ben isn’t a looming metaphor for something, although you could make the case that he represents the way humans love to meddle in things they shouldn’t, like the lives of wild animals. What Ben is, however, is a pure force of nature. When the audience meets him, he’s sweet and well-trained. The only problem is that rabies has the ability to turn a person or an animal into…well, something rabid. Primate asks the very human, very primal question: is a human the apex predator? Is our brain so much smarter that we can withstand the fury of a creature who is all brawn? Primate gives the humans in the story so many advantages. They outnumber the one chimpanzee, they comprehend technology, and they can work together. All Ben has is pure fury. Who will win?
The movie’s a tight eighty-nine minutes and there’s not much time spent setting the scene. The audience knows what to expect. The core members of the family are feeling disconnected, and nothing brings people together like surviving a rabid chimpanzee attack. Roberts draws the tension out slowly. There’s a fairly set number of characters in the film after all, and they can’t all meet their demise at the beginning. There is, however, a ticking clock that hangs above the heads of the characters in the form of a bite. One of the partygoers needs a rabies shot or they will be lost to the infection.
Primate’s ace up its sleeve is Ben himself. This isn’t a CGI ape, but a practical effect in the form of Umba in a bodysuit. The decision to go this route adds an almost tangible layer to the fear that courses through the characters. They’re not acting against a green screen or someone in a green spandex suit. The threat that is Ben is staring them down menacingly and looking far too real for anyone’s comfort. Ben is nasty, an unwilling addition to the pantheon of household pets that have turned sinister, à la Cujo. Primate is quick, dirty, and lean, a throwback, no-frills survivalist thriller that revels in its bloody monkey business.
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