“Primate” brings enjoyable suspense but doesn’t add anything new to the horror scene. The film is about a chimp who was originally brought home as a pet by the two main girls’ deceased mother, but the chimp ends up getting rabies. While their dad is away, the older sister of two has her friends over and the chimp attacks and attempts to kill them all. 

While the acting is decent, the film doesn’t spend much time making you care for the characters or their relationships with each other. There are some mentioned relationships, both platonic and romantic, presented at the beginning, but they aren’t really built on throughout the rest of the movie. The sisters change pretty quickly from trying to help the chimp to understanding they must do anything to survive, including killing him if it comes to it. This could have been more emotional and character development-focused since the chimp is all they really have left to remind them of their mother, but instead it is quickly glazed over. 

There is some added humor sprinkled within the movie by two specific minor characters. This side plot broke up some of the anxiety brought on by constant scares and gore and was a good touch to the movie. So much so that the movie might have benefited from that plot line lasting a bit longer, or from this being more of a horror comedy instead of attempting to be very serious.

It is easy to assume what is going to happen within the movie, with most things following a basic and predictable plot line. All the characters follow the very stereotypical dumb person in a horror movie trope. But even with its predictability, the build up to these scenes can still leave you feeling on edge. With a run time of an hour and a half, you can easily jump into this movie if you’re looking for some quick scares. It uses some heavy gore as a shock factor in some scenes that might not be for everyone but is just what others are looking for. 

Even though the film isn’t long, it felt a bit dragged on nearing the end, with its predictability continuing and increasing the closer to the finale it got. “Primate” would probably only fit for you if you’re in the mood for some quick fun suspense without much food for thought to take with you.