PRIMATE is a 2026 horror movie that I enjoyed for very straight forward reasons: it has a simple premise, executed well, but a little smarter than I expected, and also with some flair. You almost don’t have to mention that it’s a premise with high difficulty to pull off, because the villain is an animal. They always say it’s hard to work with kids or villainous animals.

It’s in the grand tradition of studio horror in that it’s very slick and about pretty young people trying to have a party at Dad’s killer pad while he’s away on business, but it’s much meaner than some of the audience wants these days. It likes most of its characters but doesn’t see that as a reason to spare them. It never felt to me like it was copping out. It means business.

It plays out like a slasher, but it’s also an animal attack movie. At a very basic level it’s CUJO – family pet gets rabies, and is no longer himself. But of course the family pet is a chimpanzee named Ben. His linguist owner taught him ASL, but she died of cancer. Luckily her widower Adam (Troy Kotsur, Academy Award winner for CODA) is a famous novelist who can afford to keep Ben in an enclosure at their beautiful Hawaii estate. His daughters, visiting college student Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah, Dexter: New Blood) and teenage Erin (Gia Hunter, Sherlock & Daughter) treat Ben as a family member and aren’t intimidated by being left alone with him. And when he starts acting up they don’t want to fight him like their visitor does. He’s their brother. They want to talk some sense into him.

As you’d expect in this sort of thing there’s a gruesome opening, then some non-horror set up of young people stuff: tension between the sisters about abandonment, Lucy and her best friend Kate (Victoria Wyant, Foundation) wanting to party, Kate bringing snootier friend Hannah (Jess Alexander, THE LITTLE MERMAID 2023), who vies with Lucy for the affections of Kate’s brother Nick (Benjamin Cheng). We can see why Hannah is annoying when she gets freaked out by there being a chimp there, but also, uh… she’s right! She’s the first of the girls to notice Ben drooling and acting creepy, but she’s not familiar enough to know for sure that this is unusual.

A key choice for the production – maybe the key choice – is how to depict Ben. Probly not cool to use real chimps anymore, but a c.g. one would either seem too fake to take seriously or require a KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES budget. Instead they have movement specialist Miguel Torres Umba wearing a suit, and I think I remember somebody making fun of it being a suit, but for me the illusion completely works. The face is extremely realistic, conveying intelligence but also a scary inscrutability, and the physical performance is flawless. I’ll admit it, I found this movie actually pretty scary. It really captures that feeling of being near an animal that you know if it wanted to could really hurt you. And it generally doesn’t cheat with a bunch of close calls. Have you ever seen those videos where some unreasonable person climbs into, like, the lion exhibit at the zoo? The lion may choose to sit and observe and let them be, but it’s very liable to get irritated and go after you, and if so you’re pretty much fucked. That’s how Ben is.

You know, I’ve had trouble on a few movies where you have to read emotions into the eyes of a WAR HORSE or a GOOD BOY, and it has been suggested that I lack some bond or empathy with animals that most people have. Maybe the reverse is true here – Ben really creeps me out because I’m very aware that I won’t know what he’s thinking or feeling until it’s too late. That’s scary! Let me know if you feel the same or if that’s just me.

Little sister Erin gets off easiest – she just get a chunk bit out of her leg and worries about being rabid. They all get cornered in an infinity pool overlooking a cliff, needing to get the kid to a doctor. Some characters suffer true-blue slasher movie kills: a face peeled, a jaw ripped off, real spectacular deaths that give you that kick of a movie willing to cross lines, along with the pain of a character not “deserving it” even in horror movie terms (though we can laugh when cute-boys-they-flirted-with-on-the-flight-here Drew [Charlie Mann, THE WATCHERS] and Brad [Tienne Simon, ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE] show up drunk, horny, and completely clueless about what kind of a house of horrors they’re walking into).

It’s directed by Johannes Roberts, who’s maybe best known for the shark movie 47 METERS DOWN. I haven’t seen that, but I liked THE STRANGERS: PREY AT NIGHT and RESIDENT EVIL: WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY, so I trust him. He and his usual writing partner Ernest Riera came up with good scenarios based on the limited location – having to float in the pool, trying to dial a smart phone when there’s water on the screen, trying to get some drunk dudes on the phone to understand the situation.

I’m not saying I wouldn’t have been down for a completely absurd version of this story, but they make it all seem pretty plausible. Like, at first I was laughing at the idea that this dad would leave a chimp in the hands of his daughters for the weekend, but then he asks them to leave him in his enclosure and has him checked out by a vet (Rob Delaney, WRATH OF MAN) because he knows he had a fight with the mongoose, and though he doesn’t believe there’s rabies on the island he very responsibly sends the mongoose corpse to a lab to be tested, so then it creates some suspense when he gets the results but can’t get anyone to answer their phones.

It’s a good role for Kotsur – yeah, there’s a good story reason for the character to be deaf, but it’s not at all a message movie. I’m sure he appreciated being able to star in a legit horror movie. That’s a good use of Oscar clout.

The character subplots are simple, but they all work for me. The BFFship between Lucy and Kate is very sweet, as is the moment when Hannah starts risking herself to save her apparent rival Lucy. The bond between the sisters works and so does their bond with Ben. There are emotions here they wouldn’t have if it was Jason or Chucky trapping them in a swimming pool.

Like CUJO this is ultimately a sad story, because it’s not Ben’s fault he’s acting this way, but the girls have to face that there’s no choice other than to kill him, and they’re not in a position to do it humanely right now. We don’t get the satisfaction of vanquishing evil, just that of a horror movie getting a clean jab at our gut and earning a respectful nod. I liked this one. R.I.P. Ben.