Primate (2026)
Johannes Roberts has spent his career occupying a particular space in modern horror: the director who shows up, does the job, and leaves without making too much fuss. His latest, Primate, continues this pattern. It’s a creature feature that knows exactly what it’s selling and delivers with straightforward professionalism, if not particular imagination.
Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) returns from college to her family’s impossibly picturesque Hawaiian home, perched on a cliff above the Pacific. Waiting for her: younger sister Erin (Gia Hunter), deaf father Adam (Troy Kotsur), and Ben, a hyper-intelligent chimpanzee who once served as a test subject in Lucy’s late mother’s language research. He’s been part of the family ever since. During what should be a pleasant poolside reunion with friends, Ben gets bitten and contracts rabies. The transformation is swift. What follows is a survival scenario where the family pool becomes their refuge, Ben methodically circles his prey, and opposable thumbs suddenly seem terrifying in entirely new ways.
The film’s strongest element is Ben himself. A combination of practical effects, puppetry, and remarkably seamless CGI, all animated through Miguel Torres Umba’s motion-capture work, the result feels genuinely unnerving. You believe in this animal’s power, and Roberts doesn’t flinch from showing what chimpanzees can actually do to human bodies. The practical gore here is impressive, handled with a commitment that genre fans will recognise and appreciate.
Hawaii looks stunning, naturally, though I wish Roberts had used the location more ambitiously. The pool sequence that dominates the film’s midsection works effectively enough. Humans trapped in water, kept safe only because Ben won’t cross that particular boundary. There’s something grimly amusing about a recreational space becoming a cage, about domesticated creatures forcing their domesticators into improvised prisons. The irony isn’t lost, even if the film doesn’t dwell on it.
Kotsur’s presence elevates proceedings in unexpected ways. Scenes built around his character’s deafness create tension through absence rather than sound, which feels genuinely fresh in a genre that typically relies heavily on audio cues. The family communicates in sign language throughout, which adds textural authenticity and makes the rabies infection feel like it’s severing something deeper than just physical safety. These are relationships with history.
But Primate doesn’t reach much further than its basic premise allows. Character development is minimal. Most of the supporting cast exists to demonstrate creative death sequences, and the script (Roberts co-wrote with Ernest Riera) doesn’t interrogate the obvious thematic material lurking beneath its surface. Questions about control, domestication, the fragility of civilisation when confronted with raw animal power… all present, all largely ignored in favour of straightforward thrills.
The 89-minute runtime is both blessing and limitation. Roberts keeps things moving briskly, never wearing out his welcome. Yet this efficiency sacrifices atmosphere for momentum. Adrian Johnston’s retro horror score adds flavour, though it occasionally feels like it’s channelling better films from decades past.
In my opinion, Primate succeeds at being exactly what it intends: a competent, viscerally engaging creature feature designed for audiences wanting unpretentious January horror. Roberts delivers the goods without embarrassment or pretension. Whether those goods satisfy depends entirely on what you’re hungry for. If you want something with more bite (sorry), you might leave feeling unsatisfied. But for what it is, it works well enough.