2026 may be a couple of months away, but Johanne Roberts is planning to kick off the new year with his latest addition to the creature horror genre in “Primate.” The story follows two sisters and their friends on a family vacation to their old home in Hawaii, where they meet the family’s rescued chimpanzee, Ben. However, after getting bitten by something, Ben becomes violent and picks the group off one by one!
Trailer Summary
We get a hint of that violence when the trailer kicks off with a frantic 911 call from one of the characters. Sobbing, the girl tells the 911 operator that “he” killed everyone, but when the operator asks who, we’re only met with rising dramatic music mixed with crazed chimpanzee noises. It then cuts to the true beginning of the trailer, where the girls arrive at the family home and meet the happy, sweet, adorable Ben. However, that all changes when, during the night, we hear a scuffle in Ben’s pen, and the girls think something bit him. After that, Ben can be seen chasing the girls throughout the house and cornering them in the pool, before quickly mowing his way through each of them. Finally, one of the girls hides in a car and calls 911 (which is presumably where the frantic call from earlier takes place, although the same lines aren’t used here), but Ben is able to unlock the car and get to her too. The trailer ends with a guy (presumably a friend of the group) who enters the house, completely unaware of the murderous chimp who crawls onto the bed he’s lying on, ready for his next victim.
What I Liked
Once in a while, I love a good creature feature, so seeing this trailer already got me excited! Perhaps it’s because of how close to reality this movie is that makes it so thrilling, as owning an exotic animal is already a huge risk on its own, even if you’re a professional with a license. Of course, it helps that chimpanzees are already pretty dangerous and unpredictable, but you don’t just have a wild, rabid chimp making a mess and merely biting someone. You’ve got a smart chimp, systematically going after each character! Bro literally snapped an arm like a twig, had enough strength to drag a character into the abyss like a scene from a Hitchcock movie, not to mention he literally opened a car to get to his next victim. Whatever bit that ape must’ve done more than give him rabies, because now this ape is a hunter and a straight-up menace to society. Oh, but wait, there’s more! To accompany these factors, I love that they set up a short, happy little summary of the calm before the storm. But the minute poor Ben gets attacked, the music tenses up and we get slow zoom-ins or at least half-glimpses of Ben’s face as he stalks his prey, almost like he’s studying them or plotting what to do next. I also love how the music picks up during chase scenes, and the quick flashes of gore and violence during the slow reveal of the sentence, “They thought he was family,” which gives us a haunting yet sad picture of Ben’s decline into a villain. But what especially appeals to me is how Roberts tugs on my heartstrings as I watch said decline. I’ve always loved animals, and chimps are one of the species I find adorable, so to see such an innocent and well-behaved chimp get turned into a monster just makes my heart ache at how the family is now torn apart. It just makes me hope that, in one way or another, the chimp will be cured and the survivors can learn to forgive him. Either way, though, I’m very excited to see how this story unfolds, especially when there are still a lot more details that the trailer hasn’t revealed.
What I Didn’t Like
Despite my excitement, though, I still have a few reservations about this movie. The first of which is Ben’s monstrous transformation, mainly because of how I struggle to understand it. I mean, I understand that chimpanzees are about as smart as three to five-year-old humans, but I wanna know what could’ve turned him into a murderous version of Mojo Jojo. And yes, I know that the movie isn’t realistic, but I still wish we had an additional detail—or at least a little more elaboration on the one we already have—to make such a change make sense. In the end, though, this isn’t really a con per se, since this is only a trailer and not much can be revealed yet, so we’ll have to wait and see how the story unfolds. This next reservation, on the other hand, is something that actually really annoys me: the severe lack of common sense in these characters. For example, when the girl hides in the car to call 911, she does two incredibly stupid things: she doesn’t immediately drive away, and she doesn’t leave the vehicle A LOT sooner after Ben unlocks and opens the back door. Maybe the car was already unlocked and she didn’t have the keys, which explains why Ben had them, but it would look so bad for her if it’s revealed she did have the keys but didn’t use them. But even if she didn’t have the keys, she should’ve at least booked it in the split second the back door started to open instead of waiting until the chimp was right next to her before she FINALLY tries to escape. Again, maybe there are details we don’t know about yet, like maybe Ben kept locking the doors after he opened the back, maybe events happened faster than the trailer showed. Regardless, her reaction time and survival skills are so laughably bad that it’s not even funny. Anyway, my last reservation for this movie comes in the very beginning of the trailer with the 911 call about Ben. What specifically draws my attention here is when the girl says that Ben killed everyone, because it makes me worry that they spoiled the whole story. I understand that this is most likely just a way to immediately hook the audience into the story, but given how they show the characters being separated and picked off until the house is seemingly empty, it makes me wonder if they actually are planning to kill everyone off. But even if they don’t go this route, this haunting call will end up being another wasted line that goes unused in a movie just for the sake of drawing audiences into theaters.
Conclusion
Either way, I’m very excited for this new movie, and I can’t wait to kick off the new year with it. Although it’ll break my heart to see a sweet, innocent creature get turned into a monster, I still want to see how this horrifying event unfolds as the story progresses. Hopefully, the characters will have more common sense than the trailer shows. Hopefully, Ben will be cured of whatever infected him. But no matter what happens, bring it on!
