“Who the fuck has a pet chimp?”
Primate is essentially a retelling of Ridley Scott’s 1979 horror masterpiece Alien if the cargo vessel Nostromo, deep in the black void of space, is an isolated mansion cut into the Hawaiian cliffs where the main cast is trapped in an infinity pool, and the fearsome Xenomorph is a rabid chimp determined to kill them all. Inspirations for this feature seem to be drawn from an urge to depict the murderous, off-camera chimpanzee rampage in Jordan Peele’s 2022 film, Nope, as well as borrowing some elements from Stephen King’s Cujo and the 1995 Frank Marshall film, Congo, where a gorilla named Amy is taught American Sign Language. The ape also has a more sophisticated means of communication, using a device that translates her gestures into speech. Primate is a tight, well-crafted, gore-filled, nature-horror throwback wherein people (and scientists) do unimaginably stupid things and pay the ultimate price.
“There’s a rope in there, let’s tie him up!”
Primate is a 2026 Paramount Pictures release directed by Johannes Roberts from a story written by Roberts and Ernest Riera. Oscar-winning star Troy Kotsur leads a cast consisting of Johnny Sequoyah, Victoria Wyant, Benjamin Cheng, Gia Hunter, and Jessica Alexander.
“There’s something wrong with Ben.”
Lucy (Sequoyah) returns to her family home in Hawaii a year after her mother, a notable Professor of Linguistics, dies from cancer. She brings some of her college classmates with her. Lucy’s crush, Nick (Cheng), and best friend, Kate (Wyant), along with Kate’s friend Hannah (Alexander) have come along for emotional support (and also to party hearty in Hawaii). Lucy left her younger sister Erin (Hunter) behind to deal with their father, Adam (Kotsur), a deaf author who achieves success by writing about his wife’s scientific triumphs and is trying to dodge his despair with work.
Lucy’s mother trains a chimpanzee ASL and names it Ben. Following that, she provides Ben with a touchscreen vocalizer that can translate his inputs into legible, if crude, speech. They then raise Ben as something between pet and child. Ben wears human clothing, has stuffed animals for toys, and during the day is given free roam of the household. At night, he is kept in a locked enclosure surrounded by the tropical Hawaiian jungle.
Ben also missed Lucy, so after a tender reunion with her family, Lucy gives the chimp a teddy bear while explaining to her incredulous college friends her relationship with Ben. He is returned to his cage on the edge of the forest to sleep with his new fuzzy friend.
The next morning, Adam discovers that Ben has killed a mongoose after the critter bit him. He sends the corpse to a lab for rabies testing, though Adam is sure rabies doesn’t exist in Hawaii. Just to be safe, Adam summons Ben’s doctor to provide the chimp with an antibiotic. Dr Lambert will arrive the next morning. Adam has a crucial book signing that has to go just right so he bids his daughters farewell and leaves them with Lucy’s schoolmates and Ben after rescuing Hannah, who is cornered by the aggressive-acting chimp. Adam asserts control over Ben using a high-pitched whistle and again returns the chimp to his kennel.
The next afternoon, the girls lounge in the cliffside infinity pool and decide to invite some boys they met on the flight to come party with them later. As they continue to day-drink, Kate hits her limit and gets sick, prompting Lucy to put her to bed. Later that night, she recovers a bit and wanders down to the pool deck, where she is startled to find a drooling and twitchy Ben growling at her. Kate shouts for Lucy, who joins her on the deck along with Erin, Nick, and Hannah.
Lucy can’t fathom how Ben got out of his cell. Nick thinks they should tie the chimp up. Hannah thinks they should shoot it. While they’re deliberating, Ben grabs Erin and buries his teeth into her thigh, ripping out a huge chunk of flesh. The group recoils in panic and leap for the pool because chimpanzees are afraid of water and have great difficulties learning how to swim.
Erin’s blood gushes out of her gaping wound before the flow is staunched by a makeshift tourniquet. Still, whatever pathogen that’s pumping through Ben’s system has now infected Erin. The clock is ticking and the unsteady, contaminated chimpanzee paces at the edge of the pool, stalking his prey.
Will Adam “hear” from the lab in time? Will Nick do something stupid to impress Hannah? Can Kate keep them all on the same page? Can Lucy think of a plan to get past the chimp? Can Erin stay alive? What will Ben do when those boys arrive? See Primate to find out.
“Bad Lucy.”
The ball is rolling at a rapid pace from the very start of this taut thriller and the tension doesn’t let up until the climax and denouement. There is an impressive level of gore splashed about during the runtime, and anyone with any knowledge of the savage nature of healthy chimpanzees would expect nothing less. The establishing shots of the cliffside mansion are beautiful, and though the film basically takes place entirely within that one location, the lavish villa takes on a suffocating, claustrophobic feel when the characters are sneaking from room to room searching for smartphones while being stalked by a sick, homicidal chimp. There are times where the chimp looks (and moves) like a man in a suit, especially when interacting with the main characters early on in more direct lighting, and no manner of mo-cap can conceal it. The best cloak is the cover of darkness, which Primate uses to great advantage, providing several tense jump-scares. The audience at this reviewer’s show quailed at the proper moments and shouted encouragements along with advice for the characters at the screen enthusiastically. There is a particular scare that works so well, Johannes Roberts uses the exact same set-up twice to similar effect.
Roberts isn’t a subtle director. When heads grapefruit on rocks or Ben tears a person apart, there’s no cut-away, just scads of pineapple-popping sounds, blood splashing, and panicked screams that trail off into death-rattles. This film has a very high squick-factor. Roberts puts his characters in the stupidest positions possible and leaves them to fumble through (or not). This reviewer can’t imagine that 26 years into the 21st century, scientists would still be stupid enough to raise chimps with their families. There have been scores of stories of civilians raising chimpanzees only for the animals to turn on them, rip their faces off, and eat all of their fingers. One would expect an actual SCIENTIST to reject the notion that this scenario would be a good one for their children in whole cloth. This reviewer suspects that Roberts is underplaying the strength and viciousness of a rabid chimpanzee, as healthy chimps can be just merciless.
This reviewer would also like to think that a caring father who has the SLIGHTEST suspicion that his pet chimp might be sick wouldn’t leave his family alone with it. One would think that when finding out conclusive information, a caring father would call animal control or the police BEFORE he made his way back home in the name of efficient safety, but that sort of father rarely shows up in horror films.
There are a few continuity errors, most notably a very vividly broken arm that Roberts expects the audience to forget about mere moments later, during the frenzied and cathartic ending. Also, not a phone in this film has a lock screen. The characters constantly picking the dumbest course of action gets a little tedious after a while, but along with stupid-acting scientists, that’s another long-standing horror trope.
Kotsur is a deaf actor playing a deaf character, and one of the scarier segments in the story involves his perspective as the chimpanzee sneaks up on him but neither he nor the audience (who know that Ben is there) can hear anything.
A certain type of genre fan will love this movie. Primate is a solid horror film that hearkens back to an earlier era of unapologetic, exploitative gore-fests and creature-features. Leave your brains at home (the chimp likes to smash brains), and you will enjoy Primate.
Primate is in theatres 1/9/2026.
Newsdesk 
Anthony Andujar Jr.