Saagar Kote
Directed by Johannes Roberts, ‘Primate’ follows the adventures of Lucy Pinborough and her friends as they visit her isolated and picturesque house in Hawaii. Lucy’s dad, Adam, and sister, Erin, welcome her and her friends to the house for what promises to be a fun weekend. What captures Lucy’s friends’ attention is Ben, her family’s pet chimpanzee. Ben shares a jovial relationship with the family and shows great intelligence. Things take a turn when Adam leaves the house for work, and Ben is bitten by a rabid mongoose.
The friendly Chimpanzee develops rabies and gets increasingly violent. As Ben starts to physically attack Lucy and the group, they face an unprecedented risk. With no help from the outside world, the gang must find a way to outsmart Ben before he kills them all with his brute strength. Ben plays a significant role in the horror film, as he controls the fates of the human characters. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Ben the Chimpanzee is Brought to Life by Practical Effects and a Human Performance
In ‘Primate,’ Ben’s intensity adds to the gritty feel of the story and elevates the stakes for the characters. Reportedly, the director, Johannes Roberts, preferred practical effects over CGI to bring Ben to life on the screen. The filmmaker insisted on authenticity, seeking to ground the horror movie’s frightening moments and make them unpredictable. To achieve this, he prioritized using practical effects over digital effects. This choice enabled the film to capture natural movement, spontaneous reactions, and a level of realism that CGI cannot match. Movement specialist Miguel Torres Umba portrays Ben in the film by wearing a creature suit. The actors were able to provide realistic emotions due to the fact that Ben wasn’t just a digital creation.
Talking to Filmspeak, Johannes Roberts said, “I had a team of puppet and animatronic people doing the facial expressions and all sorts of stuff like that. Miguel would have different contact lenses for different stages of rabies and all that stuff. Chimpanzees obviously have longer arms and body proportions, so we would have different arms for doing different things, and for the legs, we would have different ones for walking and different extensions, different hands for holding on to things.”
Avoiding CGI and having an actor portray Ben made it possible for the filmmaking team to build the world around him through sequences and puppet heads. The director also said that he is a big fan of the movie ‘Cujo’ in which a rabid dog starts attacking people. The filmmaker wanted to understand the process behind ‘Cujo’ and how it used different practical techniques to narrate the story. Thus, ‘Primate’ is a bold and creative film that uses practical effects to capture horror.
Miguel Torres Umba Adds Ferocity and Unpredictability to Ben the Chimpanzee
Miguel Hernando Torres Umba, a Colombian actor and movement specialist, trained in acting in Bogotá, then focused on corporeal mime and physical theatre in London. He is known for his collaboration with Gecko Theatre. Subsequently, his international stage and screen career was shaped. He started his TV acting career with the series ‘Fit,’ where he plays a Mime Artist. He appears as Hernando in ‘Institute’ and also plays a role in ‘National Theatre at Home: Kin.’ His commanding depiction of Ben in ‘Primate’ gave him more recognition. His solo show ‘Stardust’, exploring the human impact of the war on drugs in Latin American communities, was acclaimed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He also plays Healer in Gecko Theatre’s ‘Missing’ and Pacho in the play ‘The Wedding.’
His acting stems from his background in emotionally driven physical movement and transformation. Apart from being an actor, Miguel is also a director and a major contributor to the field of immersive theatre. He is also recognized for his work as creative director for Rematch Live’s ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ and performance director for Glastonbury’s ‘Terminal 1.’ His other projects as a creative director include ‘Moulin Rouge’, ‘Back to the Future’, and ‘Star Wars.’ After spending more than twelve years at Secret Cinema, he has formed his own company called “Umba Arts,” through which he wishes to empower young Latin Americans in London to celebrate their cultural identity through the performing arts and Youth Theatre.
Talking to Future of the Force about his depiction of Ben the Chimpanzee, Miguel Torres Umba said, “Well, I think what was useful was to play the character as a character, you know, just give it a bit of personality. I think what could have been really easy was to go into a rabid place and just be mindless and very angry all the time. That would have been one simple colour, but then we decided, and as I was playing it, to also infuse it with personality and give it a sense of like, once he passed the threshold of pain, and he became the killer that he became, then he was like, okay. But maybe he’s thinking about it, too.” Miguel will continue to deliver unique roles as he moves forward in his career.
Read More: Where Was Primate Filmed?
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