Uninspiring title, but with some good thrills and chills.

In many ways, Johannes Roberts’ Primate is exactly what you’d expect it to be: a typical feral animal story that is gory, fairly silly, and generally implausible -  in essence, exactly what it should be. That being said, the film does have some merits, including some jump scares and surprisingly tense and unnerving moments. Animal lovers and people who ask, “Does the dog die?” beware: the monkey, a rabies-infected chimp named Ben, is the monster in the film, and … and there’s no dog in it.

            College student Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah), along with her best friend Kate (Victoria Wyant) and Kate’s brother Nick (Benjamin Cheng), as well as Kate’s tagalong friend Hannah (Jessica Alexander), come to Hawaii for a visit, staying at Lucy’s family’s secluded mountain home for a visit with Lucy’s father, Adam. In a typical convenient slasher movie trope, Adam, a deaf author of some notoriety, has to leave town for a book signing, leaving the young, virile college kids alone in Adam’s palatial mansion in paradise for the weekend. Lucy’s mother, a “famous” linguistics professor, died the year before, but the subject of her research, Ben, a beloved family chimpanzee, still lives on the property. Ben is bitten by a mongoose with rabies, and Ben begins eliminating the young people, along with a couple of guys they meet on the airplane, with a ruthless, bloody vigor that would make any movie slasher envious.

            This is not Shakespeare, and it isn’t supposed to be. While a bit trite, director Roberts manages to infuse some fairly scary scenes, more than a couple jump scares, and a couple of unnerving moments as our college kids attempt to survive Ben’s onslaught, including having to stay in the swimming pool for hours, where Ben, who’s hydrophobic, won’t come to get them. Adding to the drama is Lucy’s sister Erin, wounded by Ben, is in desperate need of medical attention.

            There are some perplexing elements to the story – we learn next to nothing about Lucy’s famous mother and only get a glimpse of her father’s fame. Take it from me, even Stephen King would have a hard time affording the gorgeous mountain hideaway the family lives in, even if he had a “famous linguistic professor wife.” And if “famous linguistics professor” isn’t an oxymoron, I don’t know what is.

            There are a couple of pretty gruesome deaths and a lot of human-on-animal violence (mostly vice versa), and if that’s not your thing, this movie probably isn’t for you. This old long-term horror hound found it funny, jumped a couple of times, and found myself yelling at the humans when they did stupid things (which, predictably, was often). In essence, it was entertaining.