Release Date – 30th January 2026, Cert – 18, Run-time – 1 hour 29 minutes, Director – Johannes Roberts
After being infected with rabies a chimpanzee (Miguel Torres Umba) turns deadly and terrorises the family that owns it, and their friends, in their isolated home.
There’s only so far you can take a film like Primate. The story of being trapped by a friendly-turned-deadly pet is somewhat familiar, and when confined to an isolated home on the cliff-edge of a Hawaiian island is also limited. That point where the film can’t go much further arrives about 20 minutes in when the central group of young friends are trapped in a swimming pool, looking over the rocky edge, with chimpanzee Ben (movement specialist Miguel Torres Umba) lurking around it, ready to attack at any moment.
And his attacks are, while brief and sometimes shown slightly off-screen, despite the film’s 18 rating, brutal. His first attack in the first few second happens in darkness until the camera pushes in and reveals a victim with his face half ripped off. It’s a grisly opening that promises a good deal more to come. While that’s not quite the case as the friendly chimp quickly turns deadly after catching rabies there are still some moments of dark-red splatter, or perhaps rather puddles. Yet, because of the infrequency some of the sudden bursts into violent horror can feel somewhat overblown within the confines of the film.
We can tell from the point Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah), younger sibling Erin (Gia Hunter) and friends Kate (Victoria Wyant), Nick (Benjamin Cheng) and slightly distanced Hannah (Jessica Alexander) first land in the pool just who’s going to survive and who won’t. And it’s not entirely a matter of in what order they won’t, just when. The film appears to lean into that fact as it knows you’re waiting for the next kill and so puts focus on that fact without building up tension, simply promising that there will be more along the way at some point. Although occasionally when they do the editing is so frantic that the bloody details seem to be shot around and the possible intensity and general effect of the slaughter lost.
In this regard there’s a very simple frenzied ape horror at play. There’s no background or layered or additional themes, and it doesn’t try to include any of these. And that’s not a bad thing. A simple piece of popcorn horror cinema is nothing to be sniffed at or seen as negative. And Primate is perfectly fine. Yes, perhaps a bit too slim, and it certainly reaches as far as it can go within the first half an hour, although maintaining a sense of threat and occasional intrigue rather than tension, but it does a decent enough job of keeping things going for 90 minutes. Largely with the promise of more horror around each corner. You know what you’re going to get and you get it in a tight 89-minute run-time. It just feels as if it had a bit more space it could have that bit more intensity and entertainment factor.
You can see the limits of Primate’s simple narrative and setting very early on, and it hits those not long after. While it could be a bit more intense and entertaining, what there is passes the short run-time well enough without gaps between kills feeling too overstretched.
Just A Little Bit Random 