Review: Primate (2026)

Whatever small part of me hoped to one day own a pet chimpanzee, that part was stalked, bludgeoned, and had its jaw torn completely off this past Thursday night at a screening of Primate (2026), a film about a family whose pet chimpanzee suddenly contracts rabies and begins to run amok. Primate borrows heavily from Cujo (1983), another pet-goes-berserk thriller, but where the Saint Bernard in Cujo was limited due to its lack of opposable thumbs, Primate makes up for this shortcoming in spades, offering a furry fiend that can dangle from lights, open car doors, and communicate with its victims using a tablet-like device that is conveniently pre-loaded with words like “dead.” As I was watching Primate, one thing that stood out to me was the sense of dread that hangs over this film like a chimpanzee hanging over the edge of a cliffside swimming pool. Perhaps it is a testament to Director Johannes Roberts, the filmmaker behind other genre hits like 47 Meters Down (2017) and the criminally underrated The Strangers: Prey at Night (2018), who rarely succumbs to using jump scares and instead relies on genuine suspense to deliver his thrills and chills. While there does exist a certain sense of “we’ve seen all of this before” in Primate (especially given the wide range of animal attack horror films that have haunted theatergoers since time immemorial)—and while the story of Primate is rather predictable when it comes to who lives, who dies, and who is going to save the day—it is a fun watch and a serviceable thriller. I just wish the filmmakers had come up with a better title (Rabid, perhaps?), as the one that they went with is neither clever nor offers anything in the way of double-meaning.