Dear Watchers,Today, we’re talking about a chimpanzee that is nowhere as friendly as Bubbles. In fact, this one is infected with rabies and is on a violent rampage. Which means it’s another Genre Movie Wednesday. We’re focused on horror titles this week, and our expert in that field, Erik Piepenburg, is throwing some mad chimps our way in one of his selections. He pairs that with a movie that includes plenty of kids but is definitely not for kids. (You’ll want to stay off the playground after watching that film, which features a literal slide to hell.) Read what Erik has to say about each movie below, then head here for three more of his picks. Happy Watching. ‘Primate’
Where to watch: Stream “Primate” on Paramount+. This action-survival thriller, directed by Johannes Roberts, carries on the lineage of “Link,” “Monkey Shines” and other simian-themed horror movies. Set at a cliffside mansion in Hawaii, the film is about Ben, a sweet-faced pet chimpanzee who gets rabies and goes on a blood-soaked tear against his owner and a group of her friends on vacation. The script, written by Roberts and Ernest Riera, is paper-thin; don’t expect much of a meditation on anything. That’s not a complaint, though. The film isn’t trying to reinvent the scary monkey subgenre or force emotional investment in its shallow stock characters. It’s here only for the jump scares, the prolonged cat-and-mouse games and some brutal gore in the slasher tradition. For many horror fans, myself included, that’s plenty. A big round of applause for the actor Miguel Torres Umba, who, with help from Millennium FX’s top-notch practical effects, plays Ben like an enraged but graceful gymnast. ‘Hive’
Where to watch: Stream “Hive” on Tubi. “Hell is for children,” Pat Benatar belted in 1980. In this hallucinatory thriller from the writer-director Felipe Vargas, hell is children. Sasha (Xochitl Gomez) hopes to make enough money for college by babysitting Zaley (Victoria Firsova), a bratty little girl who lives with her emotionally removed mother in an upscale neighborhood. Sasha’s landscaper brother, Marco (Aaron Dominguez), encourages his sister to stay as invisible as possible when she’s at work. At a park with Zaley, Sasha wonders why there are lots of kids playing but no parents or caregivers. And why do the kids keep staring at her? What’s with the girl with a puss-oozing sore on her face? Most important: Why is the playground moving? I’ll tell you why: The slide is actually a portal to hell, and these little monsters are its gatekeepers. By centering on working-class Latino protagonists, Vargas uses a kids-gone-wrong story to deliver a timely message about racism and inequality. (“Village of the Damned” meets “Get Out” seems to have been his intended target.) The story gets more nonsensical the more supernatural it gets, but the playground battle scenes are amusingly freaky.
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