If you spent time watching early ‘70s Saturday morning kids’ TV, the darkest recesses of your memory bank possibly contain triggering flashes of the short-lived ABC series Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp. This pre-PETA nightmare was basically a simian ripoff of Get Smart! with a cast of chimpanzees in human drag playing agents from APE (the Agency to Prevent Evil) foiling the plots of the nefarious organization known as CHUMP (Criminal Headquarters for Underworld Master Plan). It even featured chimps in hippie garb as undercover spies playing in a groovy band called The Evolution Revolution. And people wonder why so many of us grew up to be head cases.

I spent a lot of time thinking about Lancelot Link while watching Primate — and not just wondering how my parents’ gaydars remained unresponsive while I was gushing about Lance’s hip-chick sidekick Mata Hairi and high-camp villainous foes the Duchess and the Dragon Lady. But I digress.

Primate

The Bottom Line

Monkey business turns hairy.

Release date: Friday, Jan. 9
Cast: Johnny Sequoyah, Jessica Alexander, Troy Kotsur, Victoria Wyant, Gia Hunter, Benjamin Cheng, Charlie Mann, Tienne Simon, Miguel Torres Umba
Director: Johannes Roberts
Screenwriter: Johannes Roberts, Ernest Riera
Rated R,
1 hour 27 minutes

It’s a relief in director Johannes Roberts’ horror movie that there are no actual chimps flapping their gums while voiceover actors dub corny dialogue. Instead, the eponymous primate, whose name is Ben (more about that shortly), is played by movement and mime specialist Miguel Torres Umba in a monkey suit. The physicality is convincing, as are the animal strength, the agitated shrieking and the sudden explosions of violent rage — even if the masks and prosthetics often tend to recall the headgear worn in 2024’s bizarre Robbie Williams bio-musical, Better Man. Suspension of disbelief is a tall order.

But Roberts and co-writer Ernest Riera know their B-movie playbook and are not averse to having fun with it. The director is best known for the 2017 Mandy Moore shark thriller 47 Meters Down, and he sticks to the monster movie template of perfunctory character introduction before unleashing virtually nonstop mayhem.

As is so often the case, the key players are college kids who have just completed their freshman year and are looking to unwind. Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) invites her lifelong friend Kate (Victoria Wyant) to join her at the luxurious home of her writer father Adam (Troy Kotsur), nestled into a Hawaiian cliffside and surrounded by lush rainforests.

Kate gives Lucy an unwelcome surprise by inviting along pushy Hannah (Jessica Alexander), who already spells trouble on the flight and draws the attention of two rowdy frat boys, Drew (Charlie Mann) and Brad (Tienne Simon). Hannah also gets under Lucy’s skin when she comes on strong with Kate’s brother Nick (Benjamin Chang), despite picking up on her host’s longtime crush on him. Clearly, we need a shady bitch to provide satisfaction when she gets a clump of hair ripped out, just as we need douchey party boys to get their jaws torn off or be bludgeoned with a shovel.

All this romantic rivalry and interpersonal friction adds up to nothing, however, since as soon as Ben starts rampaging, they are all thrust into the same collective peril. The only relationship that matters is Lucy’s bond with her younger sister Erin (Gia Hunter), who is resentful about being left alone with their dad to grieve their late mother.

Mom was a linguistics professor studying the ability of humans and chimps to communicate, which explains how Ben became the family pet. But unhappily for everyone, Ben gets a nasty bite from a mongoose found in shreds on the floor of his enclosure and goes full freakout. With Adam away at an author event, the teens are left to fend for themselves as casualties quickly pile up.

The injuries and thrill kills provide plenty of jump scares and nasty jolts as Ben, frothing at the mouth and scowling like a maniac, tears chunks out of the humans and keeps finding gnarlier ways to dispose of them, starting with one hapless character who quite literally drops out of the picture. Given that chimps can’t swim, the kids take refuge in the pool. But Ben is not easily deterred.

On its own terms, Primate delivers, though the script is too psychologically undernourished to make us invest in the characters or feel sympathy for the traumatized chimp, a beloved family member turned ruthless savage by factors beyond his control.

Audiences with an ounce of sensitivity toward animals whose wild instincts have been stifled by human intervention might see this as a cross between James Marsh’s soulful experimentation study Project Nim and the terrifying sitcom chimp incident in Jordan Peele’s Nope. But the screenplay fails to muster much compassion for Ben, beyond Lucy and Erin’s initial horror at the idea of killing him. Just the animal’s name alone is disorienting — I kept waiting for Michael Jackson to sing “Ben,” the sweet ode of a lonely boy to his misunderstood pet rat in the 1972 Willard sequel.

Roberts has cited Cujo as a major inspiration, and just as many dog lovers found that Stephen King adaptation emotionally distressing, chimp sympathizers will likely flinch at this grisly bout of monkey madness. The skillfully rebooted Planet of the Apes franchise has coaxed us to think of our simian brethren as complex creatures with significant brain power. But Primate is interested in Ben strictly as a killing machine, as cunning as he is unrelenting. That means the chimpanzee protagonist has scarcely more depth than the diabolical wind-up toy in Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey.

Setting the thriller in Hawaii, the only U.S. state that is rabies-free, was a clever idea. But the cursory reaction of a laboratory veterinarian after Adam sends the mongoose in for testing makes you wonder how serious the animal authorities are about keeping it that way.

Narrative weaknesses aside, there’s still fun to be had with Roberts’ film as it builds with swift pacing to the formulaic showdown in which it’s up to the sacred family unit to defeat the drooling predator. There are some cute moments — both amusing and sinister — involving a speech-generating device that Ben has been taught to use (“Lucy. Bad.”) and a nail-biting sequence in which Adam, who is deaf, returns home and is unable to hear the bloodthirsty chimp loping up behind him.

As a creature feature, Primate gets the job done and has its share of asinine wit. Ben smashing his way through a louvered closet door to where Lucy and Kate are hiding seems a direct homage to Jack Nicholson’s “Here’s Johnny!” moment from The Shining.

And Drew and Brad are handed some hilariously dopey dialogue when they arrive on the scene. “These girls sure know how to party!” yells Brad approvingly as he enters what looks like an Architectural Digest demolition site; when Ben pounces on a bed and straddles Drew, he responds “C’mon, take me out to dinner first.” But unless you’re Jason Statham, it’s hard to get away with exclaiming, “Oh, Donkey Kong!” to a ferocious beast intent on ending you.

As for the poor chimp who never asked to be infected, where’s the love?