Ho Hum Horror
Directed by Johannes Roberts
Starring Johnny Sequoyah, Troy Kotsur, Jessica Alexander
Released January 9th, 2026
Rated R
Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) is on an airplane, heading home to Hawaii with her pals Kate (Victoria Wyant) and Nick (Benjamin Cheng) after a few years away at college. Lucy is excited to reunite with her younger sister Erin (Gia Hunter) and their father Adam (Troy Kotsur), while Kate and Nick are looking forward to partying in The Aloha State. Kate has gone so far as to invite Hannah (Jessica Alexander), one of her pals who isn’t exactly on Lucy’s friend list. Upon their arrival, Lucy’s younger sister Erin is all hugs and Lucy’s dad Adam is clearly happy to have his eldest daughter back home. Adam, who is deaf and communicates via sign language, informs her he must leave the following morning to attend a book signing and to have some meetings about a possible film adaptation of one of his books. I guess that’s how he’s able to afford his opulent house that’s precariously perched at the edge of a Hawaiian cliff.
This is when we meet Ben, a chimpanzee. I don’t know if it would be proper to label the chimp a family pet, but he’s definitely a member of the family. He’s got an enclosure in the back of the house and he uses a soundboard on a tablet to communicate with the humans in his life. Ben seems content. Lucy gives him a teddy bear. He seems to like it. All seems to be going well enough until a rabid mongoose sneaks into Ben’s enclosure and bites him. What follows is a film that uses every inch of its R rating to showcase gory moments most mainstream horror films shy away from. Want to see a monkey tear a dude’s jaw off? Want to see someone’s head hit the ground after a fall from a cliff? Want to see a person’s whole face ripped clean off? You’ll get all of those things in Primate. What you won’t get is a clever script or memorable characters. Primate is so by-the-numbers it’s downright boring.
If there is anything other than the gore to recommend about this film, it’s the fact that Ben the chimpanzee is not a fully CGI creation. The filmmakers used a person in a suit, robotically controlled facial features, and other practical effects to bring the animal to life. That goes a long way in making Ben threatening, as he is an actual, tactile presence in front of the actors. Just don’t expect a story with any twists or turns. This is a straight-forward humans-against-a-beast movie, and it doesn’t have ambition to be anything more than that. I would have dug this one a whole lot more if the characters were more interesting, the plot more surprising, and if they had leaned into Ben’s intelligence. An intelligent ape chasing you down has the chance to be scarier than a dog like Cujo, but aside from a scene or two, they don’t take advantage of that.
Primate was co-written (with Ernest Riera) and directed by Johannes Roberts, who helmed the impressive The Strangers: Prey at Night and directed second unit on The First Omen, one of my favorite films of 2024. Roberts was also responsible for 47 Meters Down, a smart and tense shark thriller that I recommend all the time. But he also directed the follow-up, 47 Meters Down: Uncaged, which suffered from the same issues as Primate: plenty of gory moments but paper thin characters. Without anyone compelling to root for, Primate will not elicit much more than a shrug from viewers as cardboard characters are killed one by one by a rabid chimp. At least it’s only 90 minutes long.
