Ben – Animal Rage: A Rabid Monkey with a Slasher Soul
Johannes Roberts returns to genre horror with a film where a chimpanzee afflicted with rabies becomes an relentless killing machine. In cinemas now.
The story is set in an isolated villa in the Hawaiian hills, overlooking the sea: a dream location ready to transform into the theater of a nightmare. University student Lucy Pinborough returns to where she was born and raised and finds her younger sister Erin, her deaf-mute father Adam, and especially Ben, the chimpanzee that her deceased mother had raised and trained for years.
The Italian title Ben - Rabbia animale (Ben - Animal Rage) - a very free adaptation of the original Primate - already says it all. The animal is considered a full member of the family, capable of communicating through sign language and seemingly docile. But during a pool party with Erin's friends, the chimpanzee shows symptoms of rabies, probably contracted after a mongoose bite. Within a few hours, its nature suddenly changes, and what was supposed to be a quiet vacation with company becomes a desperate fight for survival.
Animal Revenge
The unexpected success of the 47 Meters Down duology, where the threat was represented by sharks, had catapulted English director Johannes Roberts into the attention of horror film enthusiasts, to the point of being entrusted with a flagship franchise with Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021), which unfortunately proved to be yet another failed reboot of the video game saga on the big screen.
Therefore, the return to a smaller film like Ben – Animal Rage bodes well for the relaunch of his career, as we are undoubtedly facing an imperfect but not devoid of enjoyable genre entertainment, which revives the trope of crazed animals that had already made cults like Cujo (1983) famous. Roberts grafts typical slasher elements onto that base, transforming the chimpanzee into a kind of four-legged serial killer, relentless and brutal in its fits of blind fury. A declared old-school verve pervades the hour and a half, short, of viewing, looking nostalgically at 1980s horror cinema and its consolidated codes.
An impression further confirmed by the choice, by no means obvious in today's era, to use an actor in costume to play the monkey, rather than relying on digital performance capture or improbable special effects. The design of this atypical villain is unsettling enough, with bloodshot eyes and frantic movements that effectively convey the sense of a creature completely out of control.
Certainly, in some shots, the human presence under the costume becomes obvious, and the management of the mask itself is at times questionable, but it is an acceptable compromise that allows the film to maintain a physical and visceral instinctiveness in the action scenes. The makeup for the gore sequences is remarkable, with torn faces and mangled limbs in the foreground that leave nothing to the imagination. For those with sensitive stomachs, Ben – Animal Rage can be challenging in some passages.
Let the Slaughter Begin
As in most homologous productions, the characters are sketched summarily, reduced to the most banal archetypes: sisters deeply connected to each other, a protective father but unable to communicate with his daughters - and not because of his disability, quite the opposite - disposable friends destined to be cannon fodder. The presence of Troy Kotsur - Oscar winner for CODA (2021), the first deaf actor to receive such recognition - adds a decent dramatic weight, especially in scenes where he communicates with Ben and the girls through sign language, but his character also remains one-dimensional, more in the background and solely functional to his narrative role.
Roberts, also co-writer of the screenplay penned with Ernest Riera, finds an ingenious solution to trap the protagonists in the villa's cliffside pool, creating a temporary safe zone that partially recalls the much scarier terror of It Follows (2014). It's an idea that allows for some high-tension sequences, with Ben circling the edge of the pool but unable to enter due to his fear of water.
The narrative has the merit of not dragging on and proceeds swiftly towards the carnage, sparing the viewer unnecessary lengthy passages. The first half hour serves to establish family dynamics and introduce the various characters, after which the film does not slow down until the end credits and unleashes a crescendo of healthy genre violence. A direct approach that has its merits, even if it inevitably prevents delving deeper into characters and story beyond the promised slaughter.