'Primate' Review: A Campy, Gory, Killer Chimpanzee Jamboree

Animal attack movies are a curious genre. They’re a cousin to monster movies and share their logic, though their antagonists are real-world creatures (albeit sometimes modified or made slightly larger or smarter, like the mako sharks in Deep Blue Sea). Tonally, they run the gamut between serious horror-thrillers (think arch-blockbuster Jaws, Crawl, or The Shallows) to mainstream comedy-horror films (the recent Anaconda or Cocaine Bear) to pure B-movie shlock (Piranha 3DD, anyone?). It’s a delicate balance in mastering their tones, given how easy it is to fall into accidental camp or to run out of good ideas with such a simple premise/villain.