★★ (2 out of 4)
When I first heard about “Primate,” now in theaters after its debut at the 2025 Fantastic Fest, I thought, what a shame that “CODA” star Troy Kotsur, the first deaf man to win an acting Oscar, is now stuck making cheap horror monkeyshines. After seeing “Primate,” I feel the same sympathetic pangs for Kotsur, though the movie itself isn’t cheap or without virtues.
Sadly, the good stuff is all technical—the ape is a gob smacking wonder. We see him right off ripping the face off one of his victims, just so audiences don’t get the idea they’re in for a pokey talkfest. That leaves the actors at the mercy of a threadbare script that during 89 minutes forgets to throw a bone at character development. That really would have helped.
My final score on ‘Primate’ is slaughter 10, substance zero. Your move.
Kotsur, 57 and a leading light of the National Theater of the Deaf, says he can’t recall having seen horror movies as a kid that featured a deaf person. So credit “Primate” with making one. But director Johannes Roberts, who cowrote the screenplay with Ernest Riera (They previously collaborated on the creature feature franchise “47 Meters Dow.”), isn’t much concerned with providing human interest or human anything, except as ape bait.
Kotsur plays Adam, a kindly sort who raised, along with his late wife, a rescue chimp called Ben at their lovely cliffside home in beautiful Hawaii. Adam has two daughters, Erin (Gia Hunter) and older sister Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah of “Dexter: New Blood”), a college student now home to visit Erin and their hearing-impaired dad.
Lucy conveniently brings along a few friends for Ben to chow down on. Not really, or at least not yet. First we watch Ben do his cute act—he talks with a sound board and uses sign language to communicate with Adam. He’s the perfect family pet until, well, he isn’t.
A bite from a rabid mongoose does the trick. Suddenly all those half-naked young bodies—the girls are joined by two hottie boys too disposable to even name—are jumping in the pool and coming out shredded.
It’s here that the fx team earns its stripes. As homicidal chimps go, Ben is hard to beat. He’s a four-footer with an insatiable appetite. His bleeding gums don’t come from gingivitis but from chunks of flesh caught between his sharp chompers. And I don’t like the look in his eyes.
Kudos to Miguel Torres Umba, a Colombian movement specialist who in tandem with practical effects artistry from Millennium FX, creates a chimp you never want to encounter in person. Kotsur and young Sequoyah, giving nothing to act, soon give up even trying. My final score on “Primate” is slaughter 10, substance zero. Your move.