Primate (2026) Movie Review

Hello

everyone and welcome to the concession stand here on a KB radio network.

I am your host Kevin Reed and this is the review of Primate,

the new

killer monkey horror film that we so desperately needed in 2026 this in this film you have a tropical vacation goes awry when ben a family's adopted chimpanzee is bitten by a rabbit animal and suddenly becomes violent this film is directed by johannes roberts who gave us uh

47 meters down

Which was a sneaky good film.

I actually liked 47 Meters Down a little bit for what it was.

But outside of that,

not so much.

I think

Resident Evil,

Welcome to Raccoon City,

and a few other films that just didn't quite get there.

The Strangers,

Prey by Night.

It was better than these new Strangers films,

but it wasn't good.

And so up to this point,

he hasn't really proven himself to be a real good horror director outside of 47 meters down.

But

I was willing to give this a shot.

You know,

you had me at Killer Monkey and I was all in on this film.

The movie stars

Troy. Well,

one of the stars of this film,

Troy

Kotsard or Katsard.

Should I say Academy Award winner Troy Cox?

This is the first film I've seen him in since he won the Academy Award for CODA.

He is the deaf actor who won the Academy Award for that film.

And it's pretty odd to say that this is the first time I've seen him in something.

Now,

he probably worked in something else,

but this is my first time seeing him in something outside of that.

And it's kind of a weird choice.

you know you have this cachet as an academy award winner and your next big project is primate but hey i'm not mad at him he was the best thing in this movie at least acting wise and he didn't talk or can't talk uh

amazing amazing performance by him this movie is what it is it's is this is a pretty simple review primate

is exactly what you think primate would be.

A monkey or chimpanzee gets bit by an animal,

contracts rabies,

and goes on a killing spree.

That's the movie.

It is what it is.

If you're looking for something special out of this movie,

you can forget about it.

It's not there.

There's no dare there.

That is precisely what this movie is,

from beginning to end.

And when you do a horror film that's going to be pretty basic cut by numbers or colored by numbers,

you're going to have to hook me in the first 10 minutes.

And Primate hooked me in the first three.

In the first three minutes,

I was all in.

It starts off with a kill that was unexpected and unexpectedly brutal and

gory that I was like man if that's what this movie if this is what I'm getting in the first three minutes

I can't wait for the rest of this movie well this movie isn't bloody and glory or gory in the sense of just over abundance of guts and blood and all that other good stuff all throughout the film this movie is surprisingly not as gory as

you would think

expect but once you get the kills it is gory the kills are gory and in gratuitous but it fit it fit the tone of the movie it fit the uh uh what what direction what story is being told here so

it was satisfying to a degree by old school horror film standards and and it really was kind of a throwback

style of a horror film,

like a

80s horror film,

maybe early

90s horror film that we got,

at least those of us of a certain age,

that experience movies like this,

you know,

that.

wasn't reliant on story or being character driven or heavy dialogue driven.

You just went to it or watched it for the kills.

And that's precisely what this movie was all about.

It's a contained story in this house,

nice big gigantic house,

but a house nonetheless.

And it really as big as the house is,

is relegated to the pool.

Um,

70%

of this movie takes place either in the pool or around the pool.

Because the pool plays a major part of the storytelling here.

I thought that was genius by a filmmaking standard.

Because this is a rabid animal who's on a killing spree.

Running around the house for an hour and 30 minutes wasn't going to cut the mustard.

So you had to find another plot device.

to keep your uh cast and your characters stationary and uh the allow the tension to build throughout the film and i think this film does a good job of doing that the tension

was shockingly there a lot of tension here you know it wasn't cheap jump scares with the with the chimpanzee jumping out of the closet or coming in

out of the shadows and all this other foolishness just popping up out of nowhere you know the camera shows the area it didn't camera rip around again come back and there he stands like voila is it's none of that is is really done in a it's

weird to say this but in a realistic way on how this chimpanzee will move around the house and hide in little crevices or corners of the house and you know uh

stalk around the swimming pool where our characters are held up at.

It's very,

very smart how they executed that storytelling device.

And it added to the tension like,

you know,

I got to get to the phone.

The phone is in the living room.

How are we going to get to the phone?

Can we sneak past him?

Oh,

he's not there.

Can we move quietly and all this?

It's genius.

It was genius.

I must say.

What was ingenious about this film,

what really takes this movie back,

number one,

like I said,

story.

There's no story.

There is nothing outside of this chimpanzee that is a bit interesting.

Nothing.

As far as our characters,

there's no development.

There's not one character in this film that you can get behind as far as our...

lead characters our quote-unquote young people that's in the movie who are being stalked by this chimpanzee there's no development there there's nobody you can really get behind you know like for

instance if you go watch the original halloween you got behind laurie scrolls you got behind jamie lee curtis character in that film he was cheering for hoping that she'd make it to the end

The screen films,

you've got behind Sidney Prescott,

you're cheering for her,

hoping that she makes it to the end.

You know,

that final girl,

that final character,

our protagonist,

there's no protagonist in this movie.

Now,

there's a protagonist,

but she doesn't...

It is no fault of that young actress.

It's just the way the screenplay was written.

There's no development of a character.

There's no backstory on her.

Or,

you know,

what's her motivations?

Or what's,

you know,

what she's all about?

There's nothing there.

And none of the characters.

And if your protagonists don't have that,

you can rest assured,

the rest of the cast didn't have that for their characters.

And the film suffers because of that.

And did it take away?

Not really take away,

but you want to cheer.

I found myself cheering for Ben.

I was cheering for the monkey throughout the film because it was no other character outside of Troy.

Troy Cotser's character of Adam,

the dad.

He had a story.

He actually had something there that I was interested in outside of

Ben, the chimpanzee,

you know,

with his.

work and you know

being consumed by work.

They set that up really good,

you know?

The reason he wasn't at the house and he was out doing business stuff and he's never around and he left them there and kids did what young kids do.

Oh,

the cat's away,

the mouse can play,

you know?

So we can party,

drink and do whatever because there's no parental figure in the house.

So all that was there.

But

I love I love Troy in this movie.

I mean he's Academy Award winner yeah He was the only one that really emotes and he he emotes without speaking because he's deaf

In in that helps but um aside from him no other character

No other character uh worked for me,

so that that caused the film to suffer duh oh

the chimpanzee now this isn't rise of the planet of the apes level of visual effects for the chimpanzee this is a low budget movie so and they couldn't of course they couldn't use a real chimpanzee so as the animatronic you had uh uh

puppeteers and whatnot uh operating this thing now it looked real it looked really good in certain scenes

certain scenes but for the majority of the film it looked really really bad that thing looked bad uh especially towards the end and i know we were supposed to uh give off that is getting rough for this thing you know because of what is going through with this uh rabies and

causing him to go feral and i get where they're going with it but it just it just looked bad

And it just showed or displayed,

that's the word I'm looking for.

It just displayed the flaws in the design of this chimpanzee.

But

I 100%

respect the fact that they went practical.

I respect it

100%. Because,

you know,

I'm to the age now,

I'm the grumpy old man now.

And I...

all the visual effects are just killing me in movies and especially in certain movies where you can pinpoint it and it starts to look like a cartoon and it just takes me out of the movie this didn't really take me out of the movie because

i was marveling in the fact that uh they pulled off this practically and uh it helped with the kills in the movie

and how they shot it in certain ways to kind of hide it.

And I like that,

but it made it more tense.

And it helped the movie in the long run,

just thinking back to Jaws.

And in no way am I comparing this movie to Jaws.

But

I'm saying,

like,

how you didn't see the shark throughout the film.

Your imagination did most of the work.

And in certain kills in the film,

your imagination had to take over and i don't know about yours but mine is is pretty dark so when i when they kind of cut away from certain kills my mind just went like oh my god oh my god and all of them were doing it all of the kills will make you cringe cringe

in horror and that's what a good horror film is supposed to do

Primate,

the first film of,

or the first new film of 2026,

gets a letter grade of a B.

Yeah,

I thought it was really good for a horror film,

you know?

It caught me off guard because I wasn't expecting much from it.

I was not expecting it to be as entertaining as it is.

Even though it is littered with flaws,

it still entertained me and kept me at the edge of my seat from...

literally from beginning to end.

I would like to know,

did you check out Primate?

And what did you think?

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You all be blessed.

Primate (2026) Movie Review

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