PRIMATE

This one is a hard pass. PRIMATE presents an intense B-movie gorefest with little messaging to find. It opens with a drawn-out introduction in a beautiful Hawaiian setting, but it offers little character development.

Themes of friendship, family, and grief exist but do not appear in any meaningful way. Ben the chimpanzee receives little backstory, and much of the family’s relationship with him remains implied. Their explicit trust of Ben, without anyone present who can truly control him, puts others in danger and feels reckless and irresponsible.

The story quickly shifts into a single-minded drive for intense, graphic violence with randomly assigned brutality. The movie ends abruptly, with the remaining characters laughing, seemingly unaffected by the terrors they just endured. Little redeeming qualities or solid messaging exist in this movie.

If a message emerges, it concerns the relentless, ancient danger of nature itself and how modern technology renders humanity largely powerless. However, this movie serves merely to shock and scare the audience, not teach lessons.

Lucy and her best friend, Katie, return to their beautiful Hawaiian home for the summer. Katie invites Hannah to join them, and the girls plan a party at Lucy’s secluded, cliff-top mansion while her father, Adam, tours to promote his latest book. They introduce Hannah to Ben, their beloved chimpanzee, who frightens her at first. The girls laugh and assure her that Ben would never hurt anyone.

Adopted into the family by their late mother, Ben once worked as a linguistics scientist. Before leaving, Adam warns the girls that Ben recently bit a mongoose and must remain locked in his enclosure while the veterinarian checks on him. However, when Ben unexpectedly appears outside his enclosure, the girls realize something is terribly wrong and find themselves in grave danger.

Two stars, and here's why. Sometimes a B-movie entertains simply because it's bad. PRIMATE ranks as a poorly written gore-fest with a weak plot, thin character development, and extremely slow pacing.

These elements fuel monster-movie action with an unnecessarily high body count and characters who usually make the wrong decisions. Much of this movie doesn't make sense, with many missed opportunities to flesh out character dynamics. Their grief over losing their mother does not connect, and the reasons for giving Ben so many openings remain unclear.

Despite the negatives, Johnny Sequoyah truly anchors the movie with surprising emotional depth. This movie also earns admiration for avoiding CGI and using old-school practical effects to create the killer chimpanzee.

A light humanist with nihilistic tendencies drives the plot, with no room for God or any higher purpose. Bad things happen to people at random here, and nobody learns a lesson. Themes of grief and healing family ties surface, yet the movie offers no comfort, sentiment, or hope. Instead, it zeroes in on nature's raw, unpredictable danger and how little power humans have to stop it.

Christians recognize this broken, fallen world all too well, but the movie never offers an answer. Once Ben contracts rabies and turns into a bloodthirsty killer, the story shifts into a fight for survival, one bad decision after another. The killer ape acts as a wild, terrifying force of nature, and the human characters look weak by comparison.

They trust modern technology and spend much of the movie frantically searching for a cell phone, yet the story never points them beyond themselves for help. By the end, the plot feels disjointed, and the story shows little concern for the damage done. No deeper message emerges, and the family trauma never ties back in.

The movie also skips any commentary on the ethics of chimpanzees as household pets, or on the socioeconomic issues common to movies set in Hawaii. Ultimately, the movie leaves its characters, and its audience, in grief without hope. Christians hold to a different promise, as Paul writes, "so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope" (1 Thessalonians 4:13, NIV).

PRIMATE delivers plenty of tension but nothing worth taking home. Beneath the gore, it offers a bleak picture of a world without God, where grief goes unanswered and survival counts as the only victory. Moviegoers who want a story with something to say will leave empty handed. The family in the movie learned too late that some things never belong in your home. Viewers can learn that lesson early and let this one stay outside.