Psycho Ape! (2020) Review

Score

Summary: Even if you like the strange and unusual I would stay away from this one it is a waste of your time.

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WHY?????

The director was out shilling for reviewers for this on Film Twitter, I agreed as I usually like this sort of stuff and actively seek it out. I don’t know what went wrong in this case as this movie only succeeded in PISSING ME OFF and it took me 3 hours to watch a 1 hr and 4 minute movie as I had to keep stopping it. As a palate cleanser afterwards I watched Girl Walk // All Day which is just three people dancing around New York and it still had more of a plot than this.

This is why you should not do things while on drugs and people idolising artists due to their drug use is never a good sign. Charles Bukowski, Hunter S Thompson and other “artist” types succeeded in spite of their drug abuse not because of it. Cheech and Chong are a special case.

The story is meant to follow said Psycho Ape after he escapes from a zoo and begins a decades-long serial murder spree. There is just too much going on in the story and it can’t commit to one thing, they don’t even bother doing actual takes and whole sections of the film are pointless such as the Ratatouille debate scene.

It does have many references to famous apes of popular culture, but you can just go to the APE SUIT CINEMA group for that and not have to sit through this rubbish.

There are the “wacky” solarised effects which might be OK a couple of times, but get tiresome after about 2 seconds. The MONKEES – HEAD famously spent a heap of money doing that exact effect in the 60s when it was hard to do and not just a filter you can do on the computer. Feels like a teenager with Windows Movie Maker and too much time on their hands in this case.

Some brain parasite has affected the other reviewers of this film and they all say it is “great fun” it is not if I had to force myself to finish watching it. It does not even have the fun of something like THINGS that you inflict on other people after you finish watching it as you will not want to finish it.

This has the stain of the TROMA line of film making especially the later films which are so mean spirited that I can’t even finish watching the trailers for them.

The teenagers I saw filming TikTok videos at the bus stop I saw yesterday seemed to take more care with their videos than the producers did with this film, at least they did more than one take! I am sure that reference will not date at all!

In short I cannot recommend this at all, even to your “crazy friend” who likes memes and Cannibal Holocaust and become unconscious laughing at their own jokes. They are not going to have a good time and will hector you for wasting their time.

Trailer