Brutal Rabid Ape Slasher ‘PRIMATE’ Totally Shreds

What a deranged way to kick off 2026. Primate, Johannes Roberts’ feverish little rabid chimpanzee slasher, is a gloriously squirmy exercise in pure genre efficiency. Sustaining a bone-deep sense of dread across its tight 90-minute runtime—punctuated by the occasional obligatory laugh to let off steam—Primate is a feral scream of a January horror film that doesn’t waste time papering over its shortcomings. It knows exactly where its strengths lie: in Roberts’ unsavory tendencies, the suffocating tension, and some of the most creatively horrifying gore to hit the screen in recent memory.

Roberts, best known for his deliriously enjoyable shark survival thriller 47 Meters Down (and its diminished-returns sequel), continues to demonstrate a growing knack for building tension with a stripped-back setup and a ruthless eye for escalation. The man knows how to apply high gloss to a B-movie, and here he’s traded in toothy great whites for a rabid chimp with great aplomb. Like that earlier creature feature, Primate drops the audience into a rapidly degrading situation, where a family’s beloved but infected pet ape, Benjamin, is minutes away from turning the backyard pool into his own personal kill zone.

The setup is thin. Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah), still grieving the death of her mother, returns home to her family’s jaw-droppingly luxurious estate on the cliffs of Oahu. She brings along her best friend Kate (Victoria Wyant) and her plus-one, Hannah (Jess Alexander), allegedly a mutual friend but clearly unwelcome. Lucy’s father Adam (Troy Kotsur), a deaf, famous author, conveniently leaves for work, stranding Lucy and her resentful younger sister Erin (Gia Hunter) in their glass-and-rock mausoleum. Boys are invited. Grievances are aired. Trauma simmers. Meanwhile, Benjamin’s infected mongoose bite melts away his senses, turning the beloved family ape into a gleefully violent killing machine.

Just as the tepid college drama threatens to take up too much oxygen, the slaughter begins. And Roberts does not pull punches. Anyone who’s seen the 2024 documentary Chimp Crazy knows that these animals should not be domesticated and when they are, well, bad things tend to happen. In this instance, a man’s face is graphically peeled off in Primate‘s opening minutes, and that’s just setting the table. Heads are bashed in. Extremities cracked like juicy crustaceans. Jaws removed with theatrical flair, as if Benjamin is a savant for improvisational mutilation. Those early murkings serves as both tone-setter and warning shot: this is not a movie interested in restraint. The R rating will be earned. The kills will be graphic. There will be blood.

What follows is essentially Cujo by way of The Strangers: a claustrophobic siege film where casual brutality is second nature. The economy of Roberts’ scene-work is admirable as much of the movie unfolds around the estate’s pool, which becomes its primary setting. Both a sanctuary and trap, as the girls try to outwit a now completely bananas (and hydrophobic) Benjamin and get to their phones to call for help. Those attempts do not go swimmingly.

There are, admittedly, missed opportunities. The characters are mostly flat though decently enough performed. The tension between Lucy and the others is dredged up but never fully paid off. And while the film introduces a deaf character and gestures at the potential to play with silence and perspective, a la Hush or A Quiet Place, those threads never become essential to the film’s grammar. The use of sign language could have deepened the interpersonal dynamics as well as served as a means to communicate when the group is terrified of their crazed chimp overhearing a pin drop, but that too is only explored in spurts. That said, the silent sound design is used for one admittedly solid gag and then shelved. The film also flags hydrophobia (that’s “fear of water” for those with an iffy hold on their Latin) in its opening crawl, then barely utilizes it. A strange omission, considering its potential around said pool.

But the feral joys of Primate are much simpler and do not demand examination. This is a pressure-cooker movie built on its demented mood, joyful brutality, and buckets of viscera. It’s 100% a home invasion slasher film that subs in an ape for a masked killer. On those fronts, it absolutely delivers. Roberts shoots with clarity and menace, refusing to add too much fluff to the narrative or succumb to CGI overload. He leans into a kind of Spielbergian simplicity: strong setup, clean geography, and increasingly desperate attempts at escape. But it’s the realization of Benjamin that makes Primate truly pop.

Benjamin, brought to life through a mix of practical effects, creature costuming, and animatronics (with a physical performer in a rubber suit), is a genuinely unnerving presence. His turn from family friendly ape to unholy manifestation of rage and drool is unwavering. There’s something that’s just so carnally disturbing about the way he moves, drools, and watches that makes the little ape never short of bone-chilling. In terms of pure animal menace, he lands somewhere between the shark in Jaws and the raptors in Jurassic Park: intelligent, omnipresent, not quite as iconic, but just as primally unnerving. And when he starts toying with his victims, Primate finds the kind of darkly hilarious groove any good creature feature should.

Roberts’ film isn’t deep, nor does it need to be. Primate knows exactly what it is: a tight, monstrously effective, blood-soaked survival horror that’s more than happy to leave some deep bite marks.

CONCLUSION: Johannes Roberts’ brutal—and brutally effective—chimp gone bad horror joint Primate champions unrelenting tension and jaw-dropping gore, making this a January horror movie plenty worth infecting yourself with.