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What is Primate About?
Primate is a gory animal-attack movie about a rabid chimpanzee who attacks his owners and their friends.
After Lucy’s mother passed away, she left home for a while. Upon returning to her family’s lavish (and isolated) home in Hawaii, her sister is still upset about Lucy’s absence. Her father is happy to see her though. Also happy to see Lucy is Ben, the chimpanzee whom her late mother taught sign language. Ben is considered a member of the family, so it comes as a painful shock when he contracts rabies and becomes violent. With her father away on a sudden business trip, Lucy, her sister, and her friends try to survive the night as Ben’s mind deteriorates and his violence escalates.
Primate was directed by Johannes Roberts (The Strangers: Prey at Night, 47 Meters Down). Roberts co-wrote the screenplay with Ernest Riera (47 Meters Down, Nowhere). Johnny Sequoyah (Dexter: New Blood) plays Lucy, with Gia Hunter as her sister Erin and Troy Kotsur as her father Adam. Also starring are Victoria Wyant, Jess Alexander, and Benjamin Cheng. Playing Ben in a creature suit is Miguel Torres Umba.
Primate Review
As a pure exploitation-style animal attack movie, Primate is great! The movie begins with a gory kill, jumps back to show us how it all began, and then heads right back into the danger. It’s awesome. If you’re looking for a movie with a deep story, complex characters, or any sort of unpredictability, uh, this maybe isn’t for you. I like those things too, but I also enjoy stuff like Primate. Actually, I kind of loved it.
The best part of the movie is Ben. Unlike some lesser animal-based horror movies, Ben always feels real. He feels like he has weight, and like he actually exists as an emotional being within every scene. That’s because he does exist, and he does convey emotions well. Ben was portrayed by a man in a suit, and that man, Miguel Torres Umba, did an amazing job. There were animatronics in the suit, and I’m sure there were a few CGI enhancements in places (though I can’t point them out after seeing it once in a theater), but the fact that Ben was there, on location and acting with the actors, makes all the difference.
To nitpick the story, I do feel like we could have gotten to know the non-rabid Ben before the kill in the opening scene. There could have been a much stronger element of tragedy with Ben if we’d gotten to know him as a member of the family first, and for a longer period of time. I can’t help but compare Ben to the tragic character of Cujo, and there’s really not much of a comparison. For one thing, people saying Primate is just Cujo with a chimp are oversimplifying by a lot. Also, Ben feels way less tragic than Cujo. But like I insinuated, Primate sacrifices a deeper, more affecting story in favor of multiple stalk-and-kill sequences. And that’s perfectly fine. It works wonderfully for Primate.
Primate is basically set up like a classic slasher movie. Young people get drunk and make out while partying, then when everyone goes their separate ways for the night a killer starts hunting them. Only this time the killer is a chimp. Primate skips the sneaky part of most slashers where the presence of the killer is left mostly unknown to the partiers until later in the movie, and it gets right to the group fight-or-flight section. The group settles on survival as they jump into a swimming pool (since chimps can’t swim and the rabies makes Ben even more averse to water). So Primate also has a bit of a survival movie in it too.
There are plenty of contrivances spread throughout the movie. It’s not a perfect script, and it’s not even a very smart script most of the time. But it’s fun, and what’s there is executed with earnest effort and skill in crafting entertaining sequences. The family drama portion of the movie falls flat because there just isn’t enough interaction between family members (besides Ben) to build anything towards any sort of significance. There’s a mild attempt to sell the drama and the “lesson learned” in the final scene, but it feels perfunctory at best.
Thinking about what I’ve just written, this review might sound negative, but I don’t mean it to be. I enjoyed Primate while understanding what people might view as its shortcomings. That’s all I’m saying. For the movie that Primate is, and what director Johannes Roberts wanted it to be, it’s excellent. Tense yet fun, brutal and exciting, and predictably satisfying. I loved it.
Oh yeah, and the musical score is fantastic! Thank you, Adrian Johnston.
Rating & Recommendation
Star Rating: 3.5 out of 5
I came out of the theater wanting to rate this a 4, but to be fair, while thinking about the movies perceived weaker points I settled on a 3.5. But don’t let that stop you from seeing it in a theater. It’s still a high score for me, and my actual enjoyment of Primate can’t be quantified by a star rating which is also subject to other factors. What I’m saying is, if you like animal-attack movies, or slashers, or survival movies, with fun action and violence, then go see Primate.
Primate began playing in theaters on January 9th, 2026.
