Primate (2026)

It’s been a while since “Lucy” (Johnny Sequoyah) has been home to her luxury family home in Hawai’i, so her arrival with friend “Kate” (Victoria Wyant) and the not quite so welcome “Hannah” (Jess Alexander) is eagerly awaited by her deaf dad “Adam” (Troy Kotsur), her younger sister “Erin” (Gia Hunter) and the undoubted star of the film - their pet chimp “Ben”. Now any sense of jeopardy which we might have had coming into this fearsome frat-flesh-fest is somewhat negated by the fact that there is a very useful slide at the top of the film that explains to us the dangers of hydrophobia. Putting two and two together does not require Stephen Hawking and so what we watch for the next ninety minutes sees a lot of people go ape. As ever with these type of films, I found myself largely disinterested in the characterisations of the humans - they are all the usual unremarkable people who’d readily bore you to death at a party, so with the exception of the mostly absent author “Adam” who did bring a little charisma to the proceedings, they were entirely deserving of their grizzly fates - especially the three hormonal boys whose short shrift did raise a smile, I have to admit. The plot is full of holes and some of the dialogue is really banal, but in best Rudd Weatherwax tradition it’s the animal that out-acts everyone and had me rooting for him. The moral? Well perhaps that’s just never to mix a mongoose and a chimpanzee?

I thought it was a good film. The monkey seemed to have rabies and a personality disorder. The 2-hour film flowed very well; I wasn't bored. The camera zoomed in nicely on the violent scenes. It made me nauseous. The acting was passable, the effects were good, and the script was very similar to another film I've seen, but I can't remember the name. Is it worth watching? Give it a chance. It gets a 7 out of 10. Thanks for your efforts. Enjoy the movie!

If your ape fails in your apemovie... run
If you are hinging your entire premise on that the ape is supposed to be central, and scary, like a Chucky or a M3gan or a Shakma, then you need to make it look really good. And this one does not. Its face is not expressive enough, and you can only hide so much of the clunky motions by making the movie dark. The characters are nice, the story is what it needs to be, but the ape lets all of this down.