Movie Review: Primate

2026 may be off to a miserable start, but at least the second weekend of the year provided us with a new January Movie classic in Primate. This animal splatter slasher extravaganza from horror vet Johannes Roberts has a premise that can be completely explained in one sentence (two sisters and three of their friends find themselves suddenly fighting for their lives when their beloved pet chimpanzee contracts rabies after getting bit by a mongoose) and has zero goals beyond delivering visceral horror thrills. The simplicity of its structure and efficiency of its runtime (89 minutes including credits!) provides Roberts with the ideal template to make a banger of a creature feature. Having the chimp primarily be played by an actor (Miguel Torres Umba) in a suit provides a heightened sense of menace to the sequences where the chimp is stalking this group of terrified college age adults in the relatively confined space of a cliffside home in Hawaii since the cast is acting against a threat that is actually in the room with them and the heavy use of practical gore/crunchy sound design allows the kills to pack a brutal punch. Primate is just simply everything that I'd ever want of a killer animal movie, and it rules so hard that it happened to be released during this hallowed 31-day stretch for films that are scuzzy, silly and/or have no ambitions of being viewed as high art.  

Grade: B