Primate(2026)(Review) - Gruesome Gazette

“Something’s wrong with Ben.” Such a simple sentence that really just makes your blood run cold when you understand the context. ‘Primate’ tells the story of Ben, a chimpanzee who has been adopted into a loving family. For years, he’s built a reputation due to his mother, whose taught him how to communicate with a speaking tablet, and he’s become a bit of a local celebrity in Hawaii where they live. Where the film picks up though, the mother has died. So, Ben continues to live in the home, but without the matriarch of the family, he lives with a deaf father and two young women. But on a random weekend, a dead mongoose is found in Ben’s sleeping kennel, and we discover that he now has contracted rabies. What unfurls is essentially a home invasion-styled creature feature.

This film is written and directed by Johannes Roberts, whose previous efforts include such films as ’47 Meters Down’, ‘Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City’, and ‘The Strangers: Prey at Night’. He has gone on the record to say that ‘Cujo’ is his absolute favorite film, and this was written as a loving homage – to the degree that when the script was first written, it actually was about a dog instead of a chimp. Roberts’ directing style is elevated here because this film absolutely feels like ‘Cujo’ combined with ‘The Strangers’, and it works so well. The style is tense, sleek, and it’s obvious that Roberts knows exactly where the camera needs to be almost the entire time.

The film opens with a quote about the origins of rabies, which was initially known as hydrophobia – or the fear of water – because a victim of rabies cannot swallow, and therefore they go mad due to dehydration and an insane urge to drink but not physically allowed to. The film also is set in Hawaii, where there has never been a report of rabies ever. This lends to the realism of the story.

The characters we spend the film with are pretty simple, but well done. The father isn’t around for long, but his interactions with the two daughters is beautiful. They speak entirely in sign language (accompanied with subtitles), and there’s something so wholesome about him being goofy while limited in his communication. The two daughters have a few years of age between them, and the older one is coming home after being away for some time and brings a couple friends, which really amps up the body count. Once Ben is infected and it is revealed to everyone, they spend the majority of the film stranded in their swimming pool – which is the only real safe place because of Ben’s hydrophobia. It plays out as a standard slasher flick where one-by-one someone will get out to get help, only to relentlessly be stalked and assaulted.

One thing that really caught me off guard was how tense and violent the movie is. The gore is surprising and plentiful. All of the effects are mostly practical – including Ben being an actor in a suit with puppeteers operating his facial features. The home we spend the film in is absolutely beautiful (and is also entirely a film set, including the surrounding woods). And the soundtrack is phenomenal, sounding like a hybrid of John Carpenter’s pulse-pounding tracks and Super Nintendo era SynthWave.

The film is simple but tense. It’s fun, it’s rambunctious, and it’s one of the best modern creature features we’ve gotten in quite some time. I definitely recommend this for anyone who misses the olden days of rubber monsters and well-paced slashers, because this is essentially the best of both worlds.

4/5

‘Primate’ is currently available on VOD services such as Vudu, Amazon Prime, and Apple TV.

‘Til Next Time,
Mike Cleopatra