Directed by Johannes Roberts, Primate follows a group of friends on a tropical vacation that goes awry when Ben, a family’s adopted chimpanzee, is bitten by a rabid animal and suddenly becomes violent, forcing the group into a fight for survival.
This creature feature first made its appearance at Fantastic Fest last September, where it ended up receiving an enormous amount of positive reception and got a lot of people’s interest, including my own, as a result. People who have followed me for a while know that I have a soft spot for well-made creature features in the past, but admittedly I have not seen a good killer ape horror film in many years since the ones I’ve seen usually had horrible characters, mediocre scripts, and god-awful effects. Did this film break that curse and live up to all the praise it received? Well after getting the chance to see it at a packed early screening, I can definitely say it has earned the immense praise it has been given.
Primate is a bloody, gory, fun creature feature that is vicious from start to end and fully delivers on the promises of its premise. While it is by no means a groundbreaker for the genre, it is the first time in a long time I’ve seen a killer ape horror film crafted with such passion and effort on every level, making it the first big surprise of 2026 that deserves to be seen by everyone, including horror fans.
The characters aren’t that full of depth and are pretty simple in terms of how they are written for a film like this, but what does make up for it is the passionate performances from the entire cast. The majority of the cast members, except for two, are a bunch of unknowns to me, but they fully committed to their characters and the premise, so much so that I was honestly invested in all of them. These characters mostly make smart decisions in situations they are put in, but the animal they are trying to outwit in this case is just as smart as them and physically stronger, making this a truly thrilling experience full of edge-of-your-seat moments.
Three performances stood out the most to me in this film, the first being Johnny Sequoyah as Lucy. Johnny Sequoyah first became known to me for her role as Audrey in Dexter: New Blood, and I always thought she could give excellent work for a horror film, which is exactly what she delivers in this film. She’s the definition of an awesome final girl and scream queen in her performance, making me really care about her character as she goes through intense hell to help the others survive such a perilous situation.
The next performance that stood out to me came from the unexpected inclusion of Academy Award-winning actor Troy Kotsur as Lucy’s father. Yes, you read that right, the first male deaf actor to win an Oscar for his beautiful supporting performance in the film CODA is in a horror film about a killer chimpanzee and he’s absolutely fantastic in it. Troy certainly deserves more work after such a phenomenal achievement so I was so glad to see he was in this film to inject a little bit of heart and humor, as well as deliver some great deaf/ASL representation that actually fits perfectly into the narrative and the thrilling tension.
The third performance to stand out hugely in this film was Miguel Torres Umba who plays the titular primate, Ben. This man truly kills it as Ben, delivering a physical demanding and dynamic performance while wearing a practical suit and animatronic head that makes him look and feel like a real chimpanzee that is capable of gruesome acts of violence, much like in real life. I won’t discredit the amazing work that Andy Serkis and other ape cast members have done through motion capture and CGI in recent years but I have to admit that it was really awesome to see a killer ape being brought to life through full on practical effects and be given a truly incredible performance that certainly wasn’t easy to do wearing everything the filmmakers put on him.
The story follows some familiar narrative routes and tropes that other killer animal films have done before, but this film does manage to put some unexpected spins on these routes and tropes that enhance the thrills on an adrenaline-spiking level. From the very start this film quickly establishes that it is not f**king around when it comes to the absolute carnage that this rabid chimp is going to unleash on everyone as it perfectly sets up the tight edge of your seat narrative and tone that the film is going to have for the entirety of its runtime. It doesn’t waste time with any boring stuff that would normally grind the narrative to a halt, and it doesn’t stop having you in an absolute chokehold when things go wild.
There is also some great Sam Raimi style humor to offer light levity and really funny moments in between the gruesome and thrilling sequences that make full use of all the elements given to us by the premise in really clever ways. I was also surprised by the fact that this film ended up killing off a lot of characters that I fully expected to survive by the end. It wasn’t about how violent the kills were that shocked me, even though they are indeed very shocking, but about who gets killed at unexpected times, adding a great deal of stakes to a film that would normally follow traditional horror routes and keep around certain characters for cliche plot purposes.
The biggest technical highlight of this film is certainly the practical effects with the chimpanzee and the gruesome gore galore that this film doesn’t hesitate to put on full display. There is no CGI blood or body parts here, it’s all hand crafted blood, guts and carnage that give this film a mean edge over many other creature features of the past, as well as make it feel far more terrifying for how real it looks. The film primarily takes place all in one tropical location that is all practical and it really delivers on that isolation element, which in turn increases the thrilling and scary atmosphere of the film as a whole.
Adding on to the atmosphere is some really solid cinematography that makes this film an appealing visual experience that is better than it had any right to be. And to top it all off we get a really chilling John Carpenter-like score from composer Adrian Johnston that really adds so much to the thrills and kills throughout the film.
Overall, I was very impressed and pleased with how this creature feature turned out to be and it certainly lives up to the hype that was surrounding it since its premiere at Fantastic Fest. If you have wanted a lean, mean and unapologetically vicious creature feature to watch on the big screen then Primate is the perfect choice for you. This is one January release you don’t want to miss. I’m going to give Primate a B+ = 88.
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