‘Primate’ review: A killer monkey is on the loose in fun, forgettable creature feature

Dir: Johannes Roberts. US. 2025. 89mins

Brutally efficient but sometimes hilariously preposterous, Primate mercilessly chronicles the carnage wreaked by a family’s beloved chimpanzee once he goes berserk, leaving a trail of bloody corpses in his wake. 47 Meters Down director Johannes Roberts makes the most of his close-quarters premise as a group of young vacationers find themselves trapped in a remote home with this savage killer. If viewers don’t mind nondescript characters and questionable narrative logic, the film should prove to be a fun, utterly forgettable nerve-shredder.

Relishes its simple setup

Opening on January 9 in the US and January 30 in the UK, Paramount’s low-budget horror cannot hope to compete with higher-profile fare like Avatar: Fire And Ash. But good buzz from festival play at Fantastic Fest and Beyond Fest should stoke interest among genre fans. And although Primate lacks major stars, the appearance of Oscar-winner Troy Kotsur (CODA) and Dexter: New Blood star Johnny Sequoyah could help lift the film’s visibility.

College student Lucy (Sequoyah) returns home to Hawaii after finals, wary of reuniting with her family. She is mourning the recent death of her mother, a linguistics professor who had been working with a chimpanzee named Ben to develop his ability to communicate with humans. Ben still lives with the family, alongside Lucy’s younger sister Erin (Gia Hunter) and their father Adam (Kotsur), a novelist who has often put his career ahead of his children. Lucy has been emotionally distant since her mom’s passing, but she is determined to reconnect with Erin and Adam – despite bringing along friends Kate (Victoria Wyant) and Hannah (Jessica Alexander) for this vacation.

Reconciliation and grieving quickly take a backseat, however, once Primate reveals that Ben has contracted rabies, the kindly creature suddenly turning into a ferocious wild animal. With Adam away for a book event — and Lucy and her pals’ cellphones out of reach — they frantically jump into the pool, knowing that Ben cannot swim. But they need to contact the authorities because Ben has bitten a chunk out of Erin’s leg, leaving her life hanging in the balance.

Utilising practical effects, animatronics and a prosthetic monkey suit — movement specialist Miguel Torres Umba plays Ben — Primate relishes its simple setup, staging the film as a showdown between humans and chimpanzee inside this tropical home. Roberts, who most recently helmed The Strangers: Prey At Night and Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City, includes allusions to bygone classics like The Shining, and composer Adrian Johnston shamelessly quotes from John Carpenter’s indelible horror scores. As gory as Primate’s kills are, the picture exudes a giddy exuberance, practically inviting the audience to laugh at the characters’ ill-fated choices and Ben’s cold-hearted cunning.

Roberts does his best work when incorporating silence into his suspense sequences. Lucy and her family communicate with Ben through American Sign Language — the same language Adam uses to interact with the world — and later in the film Primate again turns down the volume in order to increase the tension. Characters try not to make a sound as they move through the house so as not to attract Ben’s attention, and the picture occasionally puts us inside Adam’s head, showing us how he is unaware of what is happening in other rooms because he is deaf. Primate is often a blunt instrument, but these set pieces exude a little elegance in their sustained dread.

The performances are serviceable, with Roberts and co-writer Ernest Riera inventing endless ridiculous reasons why Lucy and the others leave the pool and put themselves in harm’s way. Sequoyah and Wyant are meant to play best friends, while Kotsur portrays a loving but self-absorbed dad, but there is no emotional resonance to the plot’s threadbare dramatic conflicts. Roberts is on firmer ground simply letting Ben terrorise whoever crosses his path, although the filmmaker seems unbothered that the chimpanzee behaves wildly differently from scene to scene. Sometimes Ben is a feral beast, while other times he is an ingenious apex predator who acts like Jason Voorhees, seemingly toying with his unsuspecting victims to maximise viewer anxiety.

Primate’s limited budget is apparent in the lacklustre chimpanzee suit, although the creature’s frightening teeth and claws are suitably unnerving. The gruesome results of Ben’s vicious attacks are always put on full display, the camera lingering on severed jaws and split-open skulls. But in truth, one of the film’s most chilling effects is one of its more subtle: Roberts manages to transform Ben’s cheap digital-voice communicator into an unsettling tool of terror once the mad monkey starts to ‘speak’ to his helpless prey.