Primate (2026)

Score: 3 / 5

Some movies are enjoyable because they are exactly what you expect. Whether you read the IMDb summary or watch a trailer -- heck, even seeing a poster might do it -- you know what Primate is up to. A fast and dirty creature feature, this classic B-list film dives in with laughable contrivances, ramps up with frustratingly inert characters, and delivers on its promise through brutal elimination of those characters. That's it. And it's a heck of a fun time.

Of course there's no reason for a college kid to return home to her million-something-dollar mansion on an isolated clifftop in Hawaii out of the blue, unannounced with a guest, and for her to have a single father, a veterinarian, who has been raising a chimpanzee. This movie is so bizarre in its setup that you can scarcely do anything but go along with it. It's a bit charming, frankly, and I found myself eager to understand who these characters are and why they've been assembled in this way. Unfortunately, the film never gives us anything satisfying in this regard. The exact same premise could have been in a townhouse in some mid-size city, where a chimp had escaped from the local zoo. The only difference would be that, here, there's a mix of tragedy in what is perceived as a senseless betrayal by the family "pet."

Because, as anyone with half a brain cell could have told you, the chimp snaps and then starts snapping necks. Or, rather, jaws. But this is no ripoff of Nope, with its relentlessly haunting depiction of a simple incompatibility between apes and a sound stage. Rather, this is a ripoff of Stephen King's Cujo. 

You got that right: our highly intelligent adopted pet/brother chimp, Ben, gets rabies.

I won't say anything else of the plot, which does what it needs to do in terms of piling on the contrivances along with the idiotic choices of its college-age main characters. This was never meant to be a deep theoretical discussion-starter about the thin, blurred line between civilized behavior and violence, or about what defines the missing link between varying kinds of primates. This is the kind of movie where a monster seeks to annihilate the obnoxious, sinning kids in increasingly inventive, gory ways. At a mercifully brisk pace, you barely have time to finish your drink before the credits roll; you'll never piss yourself out of fear in a movie this fast.

Ben himself is worthy of some discussion, though. This movie wisely makes the decision to focus on practical effects, situating movement specialist Miguel Torres Umba in the chimp suit and aiding his masterful performance with puppetry and a little CGI that you really can't differentiate. He's also kept shadowed enough that we never tire of his appearance, and I found myself squinting to see where he was looking and what his hands were grasping in scenes when he wasn't even moving. Though the human element of his existence on screen is palpable, you never really feel the light in his eyes; he's a monster, through and through, deceiving us (and his adoptive family) with the guise of sentience. There's some hubbub about the late matriarch of this family having taught Ben language as a result of her studies in literacy, and though the film eventually wants us to be emotionally invested, it never really works. She was no Jane Goodall, and this is no Mighty Joe Young. 

It's a nice setting for a slasher-type horror film, and the production design of this mansion is beautiful to distraction. Unfortunately, we don't see all that much of it, as the plot only works due to the restriction of its characters. They get stuck in the pool, on a subset patio only reachable by a single curving staircase set into the stone. Frustrating as this setting is, it does prevent us from distractingly wondering what might happen if a rabid chimpanzee got loose in the Hawaiian jungle, which I can only imagine being the premise of an inevitable sequel. Moreover, there's something to be said here about Ben's character: this film could have really delved into some considerations of the extent of Ben's illness. Is he naturally this monstrous, or is it purely a result of rabies? How does the disease affect him (when he's not just "accidentally" slaughtering people, but rather setting traps and toying with his prey) and can we fully blame it instead? Does this change how we consider human serial killers and their (likely) illnesses?

But of course director Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down, 47 Meters Down Uncaged, The Strangers: Prey at Night) and his co-writer don't waste any time considering such intangibles. They've got blood to spill. And that they do, with some gnarly moments in an otherwise pretty lean thriller. Even knowing full well what I was walking into, I found myself annoyed to distraction by the characters' stupid choices; in another screening, I might invite my friends to loudly shout at the characters with me when they do the obviously idiotic thing. But that's part of the charm of this kind of flick: it's meant to be enjoyed by a large group of people only paying middling attention as they crack jokes and comment on costumes and settings and violence.