The new movie “Primate” directed by Johannes Roberts, which was released in theaters on Jan. 9., is a horror film that includes scenes of gore-galore. At first, the film seems like it’s just about a chimpanzee named Ben being a part of a family, however it takes a turn for the worse. 

Lucy (played by Johnny Sequoyah) comes home to Hawaii to visit her family, alongside some friends. They arrive and get greeted by Ben, their pet chimpanzee, who at first is mad at Lucy because she had been gone for so long. Ben is able to communicate with his human family using his iPad where he plays certain words describing what he feels.

Lucy’s father, Adam (played by Troy Kotsur), is deaf and communicates with Ben using a whistle. The whistle then signals Ben to calm down. Adam has to leave for a work trip, but right before he leaves, Ben gets bitten by a Mongoose who has rabies. 

As time passed, Ben began to become crazy from the rabies. He starts to attack everyone and kills everyone, one by one, leaving Lucy and her sister, Erin (played by Gia Hunter), to be the only ones alive. They have to stay in the  water because animals with rabies are afraid of water and experience hydrophobia. Therefore, the only place that Ben couldn’t get to them is in their pool.

At first, I thought the plot was very interesting. I was very intrigued to see how rabies would change everything about Ben. When he was first introduced, he was  very nice and loving. However, as the disease took over, the Ben we once knew was gone.

After the first death of the movie, it began to become very repetitive. Someone would get out of the pool to try and save the day by getting a phone and they ended up getting attacked and killed by Ben. Despite this, I’d have to say one of the best scenes is when the father comes home and Ben is attacking Lucy, yet he cannot hear it so he’s just in the kitchen eating pizza. Her dad ended up seeing what was going on and used his whistle to calm him but the method was ineffective.

The whole movie was simply just Ben attacking everyone at the house over and over again until Lucy managed to get Ben to fall off the balcony and kill him. It was also fairly short, 90 minutes, which was unexpected because most of the movies in theaters are on the longer side. I would definitely not recommend this movie to anyone, simply because it is very repetitive. Overall, I would give this film a 1.5/5.