Dunston checks in, but the rest of the cast doesn't check out...

If I have to be kind to this movie in any capacity. I think I really have to hand it to the visuals on this one. A trend that isn't necessarily new, in my estimation, but has really been elevating over the last 10 years or so, is the efficient use of space on screen to increase the tension. It's not a new trick by any means, but I think it's one in which filmmakers in the last decade have really been employing more effectively to be deliberate in making you take some visual cues on how to further draw you into the movie. The exemplar for me has been Annabelle: Creation. That one sticks out in my mind in some of the best balance between background and foreground, empty space usage, and visual implication to really create a steady pacing of genuinely eerie tonality. There were elements of that in this film that I thought they employed really well. Some of it was a bit gratuitous and when it's not handled gently and with a deftness of application, it can be a bit clunky and derail some of the other usage. But of all the things this movie did gratuitously, thankfully dismantling the visual styling was not one of them.

There were a number of instances where movement of the camera was nicely utilized as well. There were a handful of times where following the camera made you move in, out, or around spatially that added a nice touch to the way the movie unfurled. There were a handful of times where they employed an acknowledgement of the fourth wall by some piece of the movie interacted with the audience in a more palpable way. One of the most memorable was in a particularly grisly scene, there were human "elements" that seemed to hit the screen in a rather vicious fashion. I felt like this really emphasized the intensity of that was playing out on screen while simultaneously seeming to drag you into the terror by making you want to flinch as remains rocketed towards you. Other times there was simple movement that forced you to enter a space or move within it that both explored and expanded the layout of the scenery, making you feel more a part of the surroundings, as well as provided a freshness to certain scenes just by circumventing your expectations a bit. This is where I have to give credit where it's due. There was more than one occasion where an on screen shot really emphasized and engaged and blurred the line between story and reality in a way I enjoyed.

The final thing I will do in my attempt to be kind to this film is highlight my favorite character, Nick. Though not a terribly dimensional cast member, there was a sort of pleasantness to Nick that I enjoyed. There were two main things about him that I really enjoyed. This reminds me to employ a brief SPOILER WARNING which was already in effect but I wanted to stop and note it once again just for good measure. So if you were going into this completely blind, the main plot of the movie is some kids go to Hawaii after the main girl finishes her first year of college. She's coming home to her dad and younger sister...and their chimpanzee, Ben. Because that's a thing. But Ben has been unknowingly been bitten by a rogue mongoose and has contracted rabies. So Ben is about to have a really bad day. Which means the rest of the cast is going to as well. It's just like the old adage goes, "If you're monkey isn't happy, ain't nobody happy." And this film is no exception. So Ben decides it's time to start channeling his frustrations with humanity into a vindictive and terribly deliberate rage that manifests in just full on murdering people. As soon as we find out Ben's lurking duplicitous nature is emerging, the gang piles in the pool because Chimpanzee's don't like water. Google was employed a number of times to provide some context not simply for accuracy but to inquire as to the nature of some instances within the narrative that generated a curiosity. But the pool provided a respite from mangling. It was conveniently situated on the edge of the property with a ledge thick enough that Ben could traverse it, but it also faced a cliff with a craggy threat below.

We are specifically introduced to this impressive drop visually when Nick attempts to secure a rope almost immediately in an attempt to subdue our cranky chimp. But in the process of doing that, we accidentally set off a sincerely obnoxious pool toy that was sudden, loud, and would not turn off. This is a plot device we will revisit SEVERAL more times. But as Nick furiously attempts to silence the oddly placed toy, he simply hurls it over the other side of the pool and we watch it cascade into the abyss below. But we needed to know that for the other piece of this part of Nick's character that is primarily why I liked him. As the gang finds themselves chilling in the pool while Ben settles on the deck, eventually Ben makes his way to this ledge putting him between the kids treading water and rocky death below. Nick seems to be the only one who thinks an offensive front is a solid plan. I agreed with him. I think it could have been considerably more prepared and executed with a solidarity that would have had a greater potential for victory, but this was not a decision by committee. But it did represent the second intentional decision Nick made in an effort to actually do anything. And it seemed relatively intelligent. However, in his haste as he swam across the pool towards a monkey that was clearly anticipating everything he was doing, as no one else did literally ANYTHING in this moment to help, Ben simply suplexed Nick up out of the water and over the cliff, ironically sending him to his death instead of impeding ben in any way. Which is the second thing I loved about Nick. He died quickly so he didn't have to be around for the rest of the sheer nonsense that would come to pass. So Nick was a thinker AND a doer and he got his death out of the way quickly. These are my reasons why I enjoyed Nick the most.

That feels like a fantastic segue into the things I hated about this movie. Which is everything else. I'll put one of my other standard disclaimers here since we are kicking off 2026 with a real gem of a film. I enjoy SOME horror movies. Most of them, are absolute trash to me. I enjoy the prospect of what a horror movie offers, especially when I happen upon one that I really enjoy. Part of what has made this endeavor so much fun year over year is the promise that somewhere along this comings and goings of this month, I'll stumble across (hopefully) a handful of movies I do actually really enjoy. This is my fourth year doing this and I have yet to not add some titles to the collection thus far which makes me once again hopeful for a similar revelation. It's the sifting through all the blood and sinew that I somehow come across a treasure here and there. I picked Primate because I felt like it had some measure of promise. I don't know why. Maybe it's just because I love monkeys. But I decidedly went with this movie to kick off the 31 Days because I wanted it to be good. There are plenty on my list that I could have simply endured knowing they would be a dumpster fire for the heck of it. I won't go so far as to say this movie betrayed me. I cannot, in good conscience, pretend I had high hopes for it. But I didn't think it would betray me quite as much as it did.

My first thing I have to address is the cast. I have nothing wrong with the actors themselves. I think they all did a fine job with their roles. The problem was I had no one out of the entire stable of characters (and Nick truly doesn't count because I only liked him for extremely topical/sarcastic reasons and they were shallow at best) that I could truly latch on to for any semblance of hope. There wasn't a final girl to root for. There wasn't a plucky underdog I enjoyed, RIP Nick. There was no one that jumped out early on as a reason to immerse myself among the people in the movie. I will give you that these are children comparatively. I would have zero in common with a handful of essentially children so I wasn't ever going to relate. But even within the context of the narrative, there just wasn't a single person to connect with and when that happens, it's just a short ride over to Kill Them All Avenue. Because if I don't care at all about these people, especially if they give me ample reasons to root against them, it's going to make it hard to sit through the film just waiting for everyone to die. But somehow I did. And plenty of people did die. Quite gruesomely, I might add. Which leads me easily into my second grievance.

This movie really lent itself to the gore it wanted. I know there was one scene that was crafted particularly that was noted in the IMDb trivia to be similar to a snuff film when shot. It translated as such. There are directors who linger in gore that I just don't entertain. I'd say this one was borderline but had I really anticipated some of the imagery, I might have knocked this one off my list to begin with. There were elements of it that pushed the boundaries in to a bolder choice and I didn't mind it. But there were also pieces of it that seemed especially proud of how traumatic the physicality of demise could be revealed. I didn't much care for that aspect. It seemed to linger just long enough on elements that were intended to shock and churn your stomach and that does little for me in the way of horror enjoyment. So that piece didn't earn any particular extra credit.

My last notation on the people themselves is another big gripe of mine in any kind of film. I really cannot stand it when people behave obnoxiously stupidly. I'm not saying the intensity of a situation doesn't impact your thought process. Certainly the emotional tone of some of the incredibly graphic and terrifying things that were happening on screen would complicate how you negotiated yourselves in the midst of the crisis. But even allotting for that window of error to exist, these people were some of the dumbest people I've seen. Nothing ever seemed to be thought out and I couldn't have shouted "MOVE" more times without upsetting the neighbors, I'm quite certain. Finding a character just stunned in any number of instances throughout the film was infuriating. Combined with the fact that we accidentally turned a TV on when we should be grabbing a phone to call for help, or we knocked over a bunch of stuff in the closet while hiding from a rabid chimp, just further exacerbated the entire story. It was dumb people being the dumbest version of themselves in a dumb scenario. I understand it was an homage to Cujo, but even with my problems with that film, Cujo made a lot more sense. One of my googlings revealed that Hawaii is notoriously rabies free. It's because of their high standards when voluntarily bringing animals onto the island. I know in one particular vantage point, that could make it seem scarier because nobody saw it coming. But because it's factually accurate and an errant mongoose seemed to somehow magically be carrying the disease that infected our young Benjamin, it makes it just plain dumb. You put us in one place where rabies is an impossibility and then gave it to us without and explanation other than a natural carrier of rabies in other parts of the continental US, a mongoose, seemed to happen upon Ben and bite him. Just rotten luck I suppose. But that debacle withstanding, the rest of the times where somebody just stood there doing absolutely NOTHING to be helpful or to escape or anything of the sort was maddening on a level that I'm still recovering from and the movie has been over for going on an hour at this point.

In an effort to not be terrifically long winded right out the gate in these 31 days, I'll limit myself to one other complaint. I have a plethora. But I'll touch on my other favorite piece of stupid in this movie. Ben becomes a gigantic, calculating killer. "He's a real jerk" to quote the late Norm MacDonald. Somehow, despite all the standard symptoms of rabies, Ben transforms himself into a primate Hannibal Lecter and stalks the adult children in the house. As we are introduced to him, he seems to have the appearance and demeanor traditionally of a toddler. He wears a fun little t-shirt and has a stuffed teddy bear as a prized possession. But rabies made him murdery REAL quick. When he chucks Nick to his death on the tide below, he doesn't just laugh at his demise, he cackles maliciously. He's openly mocking this unfortunate tragedy. But for the rest of the time, he's a cold blooded killer, who continues to lurk and plot each death. He's a crafty son of a gun and quite pleased with himself even tricking the main girl, who I refer to as the main girl because I did not learn her name enough to remember it. Admittedly, I had to look Nick's name up because I didn't remember it either. All of these people were the most forgettable. But we get towards the end an Ben appears to be softening in a moment with the main girl and then he just snaps her fingers for the heck of it. Just a turd kind of behavior, ya know? Ultimately Ben is impaled on a table leg and he dies. The only reason he didn't get away with killing everyone is because he somehow decided with the last three cast members, who were JUST as easy to kill as anyone else, he would goof around a bit and give them just enough leeway to kill him first. Equally as dumb as everything else.

So clearly I did not like this movie. I was open to liking it. I really was. But it let me know quickly that it was not a movie to be liked. So I didn't in the end. I get the comparison to Cujo. I know that's what he was going for ultimately. Had I known that going in, I might have actually steered clear of this one. I didn't hate Cujo but I definitely didn't love it. And this movie did not bring anything fresh or modern to the story that made it a fun retelling. It depended on people being the absolute stupidest version of themselves and a number of very poorly placed items that make a LOT of noise. So it felt a tremendous amount of extra to try and follow along with an open mind. It wasn't even really fun. If you like visceral death scenes, you'd probably get a kick out of this one, though in that arena, this might still be tame. I just didn't care for that piece. Ultimately there just wasn't anything to grab on to and enjoy here. So I have to kick this one off by going low. I wanted to say C- but I think I have to go D+. It might be six of one and a half a dozen of another but I don't think this movie deserves to cross into that mid range territory. It has a high rotten tomato score and a 5.8 on IMDb but those seem wildly unacceptable to me. But I'll start up my broken record here. These movies aren't categorically made for me. I'm horror adjacent at best. I'm sure this movie has an audience that loves it and I'm very happy they do. I don't look down on a one of them for enjoying, I'm honestly thrilled that this movie exists for them to enjoy it. At the end of the day, this isn't one of the diamonds, it's the rough. So I'll leave it there and keep my fingers crossed that tomorrow's movie is better. I know that's a flip of a coin and I'll figure out what I'm watching when I decide tomorrow. For now, we have day one in the can and we are off and rolling. 31 days of horror is officially underway and despite this movie being a gigantic waste of my time, it does feel good to be back again. So until tomorrow, kids, I'll catch you on the flip side.