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After spending years away from home, college student Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) flies to Hawaii to visit her sister, Erin (Gia Hunter), and her father, Adam (Troy Kotsur), a successful novelist with a hearing impairment. Accompanying Lucy are her long-time friends Kate (Victoria Wyant) and Nick (Benjamin Cheng), though Kate also invites an additional guest, Hannah (Jessica Alexander). In addition to writing novels, Adam also takes care of a chimpanzee named Ben, who roams the house as part of the family. However, Ben begins acting strangely after a mongoose bites him, and Adam leaves his daughters alone to attend a book signing. As Lucy and her friends enjoy their night of drinking, things turn awry when Ben aggressively lashes out after succumbing to rabies. With the violent chimp roaming the residence, the group can only find safety in the pool as they work to figure out how to get help.
Narratively, Primate shows little innovation. It's a standard set-up: the script throws a group of vulnerable characters into a perilous situation, and there are several predictable moments and recognisable slasher tropes. Plus, the characters often over-explain things (during a close-up of a shattered phone screen, one character says the phone screen must have cracked when they dropped it), some of the dialogue is trite, and there are no surprises when it comes to who lives or dies, but this is all unsurprising for a contemporary horror movie.
Where Primate truly soars is in its execution. Roberts's track record with horror is uneven, but this is easily his best film to date. He expertly ratchets up tension through anticipation rather than constant bombardment, with Ben's unpredictable behaviour and tendency to lurk in the shadows generating sustained unease. The director turns familiar genre beats - such as characters leaving the pool to seek help - into superb, white-knuckle set pieces through precise staging and pacing. Another enormous asset is the score. Composer Adrian Johnston (who worked with Roberts on The Strangers: Prey at Night) avoids generic, bombastic modern horror music; instead, he goes for a stylish, John-Carpenter-esque synth soundtrack that creates tremendous atmosphere and a perpetual sense of dread.
An R-rated horror film in the purest sense, Primate wastes no time signalling its intentions, opening with a graphic attack that may leave some viewers flinching. Roberts shows restraint where it counts, but he does not shy away from the brutal realities of a chimp attack, and the violence is both impactful and varied. Crucially, the film relies on effective old-school practical effects rather than obvious digital bloodshed, lending the carnage a tactile, unsettling authenticity.
Instead of an all-digital chimp, Ben is a practical creation, with movement specialist Miguel Torres Umba performing inside an unbelievably convincing chimp outfit. Since Primate is not goofy or comedic, the ability to accept Ben as a real chimp was vitally important - a man in a chintzy rubber costume would not cut it. Thankfully, the practical effects courtesy of the maestros at Millennium FX immaculately sell the illusion. Ben's human co-stars are also convincing, with Johnny Sequoyah and Gia Hunter the most notable standouts as Lucy and Erin. Strong acting is not common in horror movies, but the performances in Primate are unusually robust, with Oscar-winner Troy Kotsur (Coda) even appearing as the hearing-impaired Adam. Of course, the film does feature a few obnoxious characters to augment the kill count, but that's part of the fun.
Modern creature features are often cheap, nasty affairs with awful digital effects that are mostly relegated to the direct-to-video realm, which makes Primate all the more refreshing with its A-grade technical execution and superlative special effects. Films like Primate prove that confidence and craftsmanship still matter more than reinvention. Plus, with the movie hitting cinemas so close to the equally satisfying 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, the horror genre looks unusually healthy in 2026.
7.3/10
