Directed By Johannes Roberts

Starring – Johnny Sequoyah, Troy Kotsur, Jessica Alexander

The Plot – After returning home to Hawaii for summer break, Lucy (Sequoyah) is reunited with her father Adam (Kotsur), sister Erin (Gia Hunter) and their pet chimpanzee Ben. Lucy and her friends decide to throw a pool party to take advantage of an empty house after Lucy’s father is called away for work. Unbeknownst to them, Ben is bitten by a rabid animal and the gentle chimpanzee they once knew is no more. The group is forced to barricade themselves in the pool, but with no means of calling for help, they must work together to figure out how to outsmart the now ferocious Ben and survive their ordeal.

Rated R for strong bloody violent content, gore, adult language, and some drug use.

Primate | Official Trailer (2026 Movie) | Paramount Pictures Australia

POSITIVES

Following in the beastly breed of classic creature features like “Congo” and “Cujo”, “Primate” is a ferociously fun and compelling thriller that captures and maintains your attention throughout a taut 84-minute runtime, all the while serving as what is easily Roberts’ single best direction to date throughout a storied career defined by bumbling blunders. While the film does follow a familiar path of those aforementioned predecessors, it firmly distinguishes itself by the mastery behind the lens that truly helps to conjure some much-appreciated tension in the depths of these vulnerably dire sequences, featuring subtle motions of the lens from Stephen Murphy, whose cinematography smoothly scrolls the scenery in ways that always finds movements in the backgrounds that are slightly obscured by the focus in the foregrounds, all the while ratcheting urgency with Adrian Johnston’s organ-dominating compositions appraising an underlining element of tragedy to so many unforgiving physical conflicts. These aspects go a long way with maintaining the legitimacy that Roberts entails in his direction, specifically in the opening moments establishing a sense of isolation in the narrative, with a mostly single stage setting in this massive mansion that allows his ape plenty of places to hide and unload some surprisingly effective jump scares, but I’m most appreciative in how Roberts places firm value in the constructs of his characters, allowing for so many unforeseen stakes to the engagement that really allows Ben to stand out among most animal killers in these kinds of movies. While the characterization is certainly nothing original or even thorough, there is a sense in Roberts initial interactions of the possibility that any one of them could in fact be the final girl to the movie’s model, allowing plenty of opportunities among this mostly fresh-faced ensemble to flourish commanding personality that effectively balances some campy laughs with the movie’s stone solid stance of playing it sternly from the hip as an unapologetic horror movie. The performances certainly don’t reinvent the wheel, with regards to B-movie acting, but they do inscribe a naturality to these characters that make it effortlessly easy to buy into their many motivations and psychologies, particularly Seqoyah’s Lucy, whose unresolved tensions at home require some brisk breaking of the ice between her and Erin, and while the youthful protagonists do maintain a majority of the focus inside of the movie’s runtime, it’s Academy Award winner, Kotsur, who might be the most valuable performer among them, in ways that the production caters creatively to his position as a deaf actor in real life. Whenever Adam is thrust into an opposition for Ben’s unrelenting carnage, the sound designs mold to mute, creating not only an immersive essence for the vulnerability that the character feels against Ben’s rage, but also unorthodox ways of crafting tension that threaten to penetrate our senses at any given moment, giving us an artistic identity for the character that created a nice element of levity away from characters whom I didn’t always relate to. Speaking of carnage, the movie is definitely rated R for a reason, as Roberts and his production revel shamelessly in animalistically gruesome imagery that entail with them some highly impactful practical effects that are given time and patience to leave a lasting impression to the interpretation of the audience, setting an incredibly high bar that will be difficult to match in any horror film over the next twelve months of the cinematic calendar. While I consider myself a grizzled veteran of horror movies, to the point that I typically applaud brutal deaths in these movies more than wince at them, the brand of carnage candy conjured here continuously pushed the envelope in ways that maximize the potential of Ben’s powerful capabilities, with one particular frat boy being among the worst of them, and considering so much of the channeling of this ape stems from a richly effective combination of an actor in a monkey suit for wide angle shots, and highly believable CGI for Ben’s raging transformation, it attains a heft and influence on the integrity of scenes that immediately dismisses any semblance of disbelief to preconceived perception of the audience, proving that practical and C.G can in fact co-exist with one another, in ways that bring out the best in both appeals.

NEGATIVES

Even as “Primate” serves as the January surprise that we rarely get from the horror genre, there are some underwhelming aspects that undercut some of the momentum from the movie’s magnitude, beginning with the consistency of the screenplay from Roberts and co-writer Ernest Riera, which too frequently feels like a virtual checklist of familiar tropes and transparent actions from the many movies before it. Everything from the initial rabies set-up, to boneheaded character decisions, to even an essence of convenience in the ways that the girls continuously evade trouble in these helpless situations, feels like the writing is taking the easy way out, with regards to how it transitions from one scene to the next, and while it didn’t totally take me out of the experience or even sacrifice my appreciation for what Roberts is able to accomplish here, it does settle for the lowest hanging fruit, in ways that always attain an audible groan or exhale out of me, reminding me at the end of the day that this is still a horror encompassing creature feature that doesn’t always abide by the rules of logic or even realism. On top of this, I feel that Murphy mostly offers an artistically intricate way of shooting these sequences, in order to leave the audience continuously on the edge of their seats, but regretfully, there was evidence in the technique to prove that his biggest opportunities to leave a lasting impression went unfulfilled in the experimental side to deviate from his consistencies. This is essentially pertaining to where he places the camera at all times, not so much in what we’re able to interpret, but rather the unorthodox angles to ratchet more tension to visuals that could grow all the more uncomfortable with the deviating instability, and while Murphy does periodically attempt this with some body cam perceptions or object placements, the editing far too often undercuts the extensive element of what would make a shot so impressive to even attempt, offering merely breadcrumbs to a curious audience, in ways that kept this from reaching the complete magnitude of its blossoming potential. Last but not least, though not a problem to even a majority of the audience, I found Ben’s suffering to still resonate distastefully within me, especially when the sound design focuses so firmly on ape noises, whenever characters are able to hurt him. It’s strange because the movie effectively establishes how evil and merciless the ape becomes, as a result of his condition, but it never made it any easier to experience the toll that these human protagonists lay on him, nor did it sacrifice this strangely surreal side of wanting him to succeed in his devious plan to kill them all, and perhaps it’s the animal lover in me that still finds it difficult to deal with seeing creatures as loving and communicative as monkey’s put through violence and suffering.

OVERALL
“Primate” goes banana’s with impressive practical work and stomach-churning gore that proves this ape has an insatiable hunger for carnage candy, with ample thickness in atmospheric dread to preheat the opportunistic oven, before Johannes Roberts lets us feast on raw and animalistic imagery. While the script is a bit flawed towards following a familiar path, with cliches aplenty, the surmised stakes firmly enact a remorseless rage that makes anyone involved expendable, cementing a rare January surprise for horror that is entertaining every minute of the way.

My Grade: 7.6 or B