Paramount Pictures opened up Fantastic Fest with Primate. The headliner for the festival’s 20th anniversary, director Johannes Roberts, opened the film by telling the crowd, “Hopefully this makes you forgive me for Resident Evil.” And you know what Johannes Roberts? I do.
Written by Roberts and Ernest Riera Primate opens with the kind of exposition I’ve grown pretty tired of. The title cards explain that hyrdrophobia needs to be cured within 48 hours before the animal stricken with it is a lost cause. And then, the movie spells out its premise for the audience, explaining what that hydrophobia is: rabies.
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Yup, this is one of the first rabid animal movies we’ve gotten in some time. A beloved family member becomes rabid after being bitten and then stalks and kills them. The film, while visually inspired by different John Carpenter-era slashers, is essentially just Cujo reskinned, and I don’t mean that in a bad way.
While the creature feature has never left cinema, the specific fear of rabies has. Rabies left with cryptids, taking its place, and for some reason, I never thought about this horror gimmick again. Yet, Primate (2025) embraces its subgenre wholeheartedly and unashamedly leaves to shock value and situation comedy that only works because of how gross it is.
Primate is predictable, but that’s also what makes it a fun time.
In Primate, audiences follow Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) as she returns to her Hawai’i home for the summer with her friends Kate (Victoria Wyant) and Hannah (Jessica ALexander). Having spent a lot of time away, Lucy returns home, reconciles with her sister (Gia Hunter), and sees their primate brother Ben. What should be a happy return home filled with home from college hijinks becomes a night of chaos when rabies finds its way into the household and Ben turns on the family.
The movie’s story can be sniffed out from a mile away, especially once Lucy’s scientist father player by Academy Award-winner Troy Kotsur, leaves the group home alone for a few days. Still, the familiarity gives way to nostalgia, making Primate (2025) feel like a film that would work in any decade.
I wouldn’t necessarily call the film timeless; I would say that its chain of events effortlessly fits into the horror subgenre, hitting just right for anyone who grew up with films from the 1980s, 1990s, and even the early aughts. While this is due to the film’s clear inspirations, it’s also something that can be easily observed because of how the film is shot and how the group of teens begins to experience the consequences of their actions, as the kills become increasingly mean.
Primate (2025) also hits a sweet spot in its dedication to practical effects. The clearly fake blood, torn skin, and crunching ADR all work together to make you wince, laugh, or yell. The opening night screening was filled with laughs mixed with “ew” and “oh no,” and somehow didn’t just manage to make me think of the underrated Stephen King classic.
Primate (2025) feels nostalgic most of the time, and that works for the majority of its runtime.
The film also reminded me of Child’s Play and the inherent humor that comes with something non-human performing banal human tasks to kill someone. Unlocking a car, using a door handle, or even just annoyingly pressing the button on its iPad to communicate. It’s all very dumb, and that’s why it’s damn good fun to watch with people you know.
But it’s in its production that Primate stumbles. While I generally appreciate the use of practical effects whenever possible, the film’s portrayal of Ben is inconsistent at best. As with any film centered on diseases changing their host, Ben does not look the same at the end of the movie as he does at the beginning.
Instead, how Ben looks at any given time throughout his assault isn’t consistent. While you would expect Ben to move from mostly endearing and empathetic to an increasingly crazed and foul version of himself, that doesn’t really happen. There is no descent or consistent removal from humanity, but rather his face just remains inconsistently more menacing.
His drool around his mouth is never the same, nor increasingly more threatening. The blood on his shirt is nearly illegible, and even the distortion of the skin on his brow ridge oscillates between showing something diseased and looking as he did earlier in the film. That consistently doesn’t do anything to build up any tension, but instead looks like the film was shot without regard to the story’s timeline (as many are), but done so without focusing on continuity.
Thankfully, Ben’s hyperviolent streak makes up for how he looks, with increasing and nastier kills stacking up throughout the night. That said, rabies is the only gimmick that works consistently throughout the film. Now, this may fully be because I despise video calls in public spaces and want these children to make better choices than these ugly juvenile boys they invite over.
Inconsistent practical effects break immersion, but the violence pulls you back into the movie.
Primate (2025) attempts to use other narrative tropes to propel the situation. And most fall flat when grounded in additional characters. Still, they shine when turned into situational mistakes that lead to Ben beating someone to death.
Despite placing a lot of value in exposition about Lucy’s family, why Ben is there in the first place, and the fact that Lucy and Kate are childhood friends, each of the character are really underwritten. There is ultimately an attempt to make the characters and their relationships matter, primarily to build investment and tension for the audience. But none of it really works. They’re all fodder, but the audience seems to be the only ones who understand that.
Primate is weird, to say the least. Most of it is endearing, but what’s left is inconsistent. An obvious ode to Cujo and a simpler time in theater horror, the film ultimately fails to decide whether it wants to take the one-location drama approach seriously or the campy creature feature approach harder. Still, Primate, especially with a crowd and as an opener to Fantastic Fest, is well worth your time in the theater.
Held back by some weird tonal shifts and inconsistent practical effects when it comes to its rabid chimpanzee, Ben, Primate (2025) ultimately finds its way home when it leans hard into absurdity. Pulling apart jaws, smashing in skulls, ripping off faces, yeah, that’s where Primate shines.
Primate (2025) screened as a part of Fantastic Fest 2025 in Austin, TX, and will release in theaters nationwide sometime in January.
