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. (read the rest of this shit…)
Well I’ll be the rise of a monkey’s uncle – this movie actually is good! I’d heard all good things, but after seeing the trailers and TV ads it was hard to get my hopes up. Boiled down to basics and money shots it’s just some dumb bullshit: James Franco making speeches about a miracle cure, quick shots of every scene where a CGI ape jumps into the air, dramatic trailer music squeals and buzzes. I didn’t even think the much hyped special effects by Weta looked that good. Instead of the people in makeup as evolved apes from the original masterpiece they gotta have Andy Serkis or Tom Hanks or somebody controlling a computer animated chimp with humanized eyes and expressions. They show a baby chimp, it’s digital. Do they not know there are chimps? They think they can’t film a real one ’cause it’s a made up creature like a Smurf or an Avatar? I wasn’t buying it. 
