Fantastic Fest 2025 ‘Primate’ Review — Monkeying Around With The Horror Basics
From co-writer and director Johannes Roberts (Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, The Strangers: Prey at Night) and co-writer Ernest Riera (the 47 Meters Down films), Primate begins with Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) returning home to Hawaii from college.
Lucy’s father, Adam (Troy Katsur), is busy with work revolving around book signings and possible movie deals. Meanwhile, Lucy’s sister Erin (Gia Hunter) hates the fact that Lucy has been gone so long and has been by herself in this luxury, high-tech house all by herself while Lucy has been traveling for school.
With Adam about to be gone for a business trip, it’s decided that the weekend will be spent partying. Lucy gathers her best friend Kate (Victoria Wyant), Kate’s friend Hannah (Jessica Alexander), and hometown friend Nick (Benjamin Cheng at the family’s luxury, high-tech home, setting the stage for what unfolds.
Apart from the crazy house, Lucy and her family live with a monkey named Ben. He’s lived with them his entire life and is essentially a member of the family at this point, being able to communicate with them through sign language.
But Ben contracts a form of rabies, and his rabid carnage is aimed directly at Lucy and her friends.
Primate is a simple horror film, and that is mainly meant as a compliment. The rabies aspect of the story serves as an excuse to portray Ben as a calculated serial killer. Ben isn’t CGI, but an actor portraying him in a high-quality monkey suit (Miguel Torres Umba). Whether they accomplish that to a realistic extent is entirely up to you, but it at least gets the point across. You can tell it’s some kind of suit from the start, but it looks believable, and Miguel Torres Umba is often terrifying with his performance based on his body language alone.
The simplicity of the film extends not only to its concept but also to its execution. Primate opens with an already sick, drooling, and not-entirely-there version of Ben being tended to by an animal doctor whose face is brutally ripped off. Rabies is introduced to make Ben crazy early on. Hydrophobia factors into everything because Lucy and her family have a pool that Ben stares off into one day and never mentally comes back.
The writing leans heavily into portraying most of the human characters as heartless assholes. Lucy, her family, and Kate are the only ones who show any sympathy. Hannah just wants to party. Nick seems nice at first, but just wants to get laid, and the film introduces two party bros that they meet on the airplane to have some extra bodies in the film’s second half.
The kills are savage and gnarly. There are jump scares and tension as Ben constantly lurks in the background whenever someone tries to sneak around quietly. But the horror film is amusing, as well. Ben is scary smart as a killer. There are moments where he lures people in with temporary glimpses of him regaining his composure. But he’s also smart enough to have comedic timing, and Primate is much funnier than you’re probably expecting.
The main downside with the writing is that the story can basically only go a couple of ways; either Ben is going to live with the intent of a Primate horror franchise or he’s going to be killed off. The survivors are pretty much who you’re expecting them to be, besides a few close calls.
Primate is the type of film where you don’t necessarily enjoy the destination of where it takes you, but how it gets there. Lucy and her friends spend half the film in the pool since chimpanzees can’t swim, which results in some decent moments overall but also a lot of downtime where they’re just staring at Ben or floating in the water.
The kills and how Ben stalks his prey are what make Primate fun. It makes sense if you disregard the film as a form of brain-dead entertainment because there’s a valid argument for that, but it also delivers an insane amount of fun for horror fans because it doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Primate has moments of pure terror that are only intensified by its raw and animalistic bloodshed. It is essentially a slasher film full of stupid decisions and a ridiculous concept, but it’s intense as hell and fiercely entertaining.
Primate is a relentlessly savage simian onslaught that tinkers with the fundamentals of horror, much like a chimpanzee playfully swinging on the bare bones of horror, using monkey bars as a playground.
NEXT: Fantastic Fest 2025 ‘Coyotes’ Review — Gnawing On The Carcass Of Comedy
Primate (2025), Paramount Pictuers
PROS
- The serial killer formula.
- Great kills.
- Solid dark humor throughout.
CONS
- Really dumb human characters.
- Concept and execution may be too simple minded for some.
