Spoiler warning: We are discussing what happens to Ben, who survives, and that final soundboard moment. If you haven’t watched Primate yet, turn around now.
First of all, I need horror movies to stop trying to convince me that keeping a wild animal in the house is adorable.
A golden retriever?
Fine.
A cat?
Fine.
A chimpanzee that is strong enough to rearrange my entire face?
That is not a pet.
That is a roommate who could evict me physically.
Primate is officially considered a 2025 film because it premiered at Fantastic Fest on September 18, 2025, although Paramount gave it a wide U.S. theatrical release on January 9, 2026. Directed by Johannes Roberts and co-written by Roberts and Ernest Riera, the R-rated horror movie runs a wonderfully reasonable 89 minutes.
And this movie wastes very little of those 89 minutes.
Meet Ben, the World’s Worst Pool Guest
College student Lucy returns home to Hawaii with friends Kate and Hannah.
Waiting for her are her younger sister Erin, her father Adam, and Ben, the family’s highly intelligent chimpanzee.
Adam, played by Troy Kotsur, is a successful Deaf novelist. Ben originally belonged to Lucy’s late mother, a linguistics professor who taught the chimp sign language and how to communicate through a digital soundboard.
So Ben isn’t treated like some random animal hanging around the backyard.
He’s family.
Which makes what happens next considerably worse.
While Adam is away, Ben gets bitten by a rabid mongoose.
And because the universe has apparently decided that one horror movie needs every possible bad decision packed into the same evening, Lucy and her friends are having a little poolside fun while Ben’s condition is deteriorating rapidly.
Then Ben turns violent.
Very violent.
The Swimming Pool Becomes the Safe Room
This is where Primate finds its best gimmick.
Ben can’t swim, and his rabies makes him extremely fearful of water.
So Lucy, Erin and the others retreat into the family’s cliffside swimming pool.
Now ordinarily, sitting in a luxury infinity pool in Hawaii would be considered a successful vacation.
Not tonight.
Because Ben is circling the pool like:
Come on out. I just want to talk.
Absolutely not.
The group is basically trapped in the water while Ben prowls around them, figuring out new ways to get closer.
The setup is simple, but it works.
Director Johannes Roberts has already proven with 47 Meters Down that he understands how to take one basic survival problem and squeeze every possible bad scenario out of it.
This time the problem is:
You need to leave the pool. The chimp would like you to leave the pool too.
Different motivations.
Ben Starts Working Through the Guest List
Nick tries to deal with Ben near the cliffside edge of the pool.
That goes poorly.
Ben throws him over the cliff.
Kate later goes with Lucy to retrieve a phone from inside the house and gets one of the movie’s nastiest deaths when Ben uses a rock against her.
Then Drew and Brad arrive.
Poor fools.
These men don’t even realize everybody else is in the middle of a chimpanzee emergency.
Drew ends up cornered by Ben inside the house.
Ben tears his jaw off.
Brad doesn’t fare any better.
At some point you have to appreciate that this movie knows exactly why its audience bought a ticket.
Nobody came to Primate expecting a twelve-minute discussion about mankind’s relationship with nature.
We came because a rabid chimpanzee is loose in a mansion.
And Johannes Roberts said:
Understood.
Hannah Almost Saves Everybody
Hannah actually manages to retrieve a phone and car keys.
She gets outside.
She reaches emergency services.
For one glorious moment, you start thinking:
Look at somebody in a horror movie making progress.
Then she gets into the wrong vehicle.
Ben figures out which key fob operates the correct car and gets to her.
That’s the thing I liked about Ben as a horror villain.
He isn’t supernatural.
He isn’t possessed.
He’s still intelligent.
He remembers how things work.
And that’s far scarier than having him simply run around biting everyone randomly.
The filmmakers also used practical effects heavily to create Ben. Movement performer Miguel Torres Umba physically portrayed the chimp inside an elaborate prosthetic suit, supported by puppetry and animatronic elements rather than making Ben completely computer-generated.
That gives the attacks a weight that a fully digital creature might not have had.
Adam Finally Gets Home
Meanwhile, Adam eventually learns that the mongoose that bit Ben tested positive for rabies.
Initially, even that sounds impossible because Hawaii is considered rabies-free.
But when Lucy stops answering calls, Adam realizes something is seriously wrong and heads home.
Thank you.
A parent has finally entered the movie.
By the time he arrives, the house looks like Airbnb needs to remove the listing immediately.
Adam, Lucy and Erin fight Ben together.
Adam manages to stab him with a broken wine bottle.
Ben goes down.
And everybody relaxes.
Which means I immediately said:
He isn’t dead.
Because we still have runtime left.
Primate Ending Explained
Ben gets back up and attacks Lucy again.
The fight sends Lucy and Ben over a balcony.
Adam manages to catch Lucy.
Ben isn’t so lucky.
He falls and is fatally impaled on a broken piece of furniture below.
So yes:
Ben finally dies.
Police and paramedics eventually arrive after tracing Hannah’s emergency call.
Lucy, Erin and Adam survive.
But the movie gives us one last creepy little moment.
An officer picks up Ben’s communication tablet.
The soundboard suddenly plays:
“Lucy bad.”
Excuse me?
Now, I don’t think the movie is secretly telling us Ben was possessed or that some supernatural force survived inside the iPad.
The phrase matters because Ben used the soundboard before he became fully rabid.
It leaves us with the uncomfortable reminder that somewhere underneath all that sickness and aggression was still the intelligent animal the family loved.
And that makes the whole thing sadder.
Ben wasn’t an evil monster.
He got sick.
Unfortunately, he got sick while possessing the strength of several grown men and access to a house full of college students.
Bad combination.
One Thing I Really Liked About Primate
The movie doesn’t spend two hours trying to turn itself into a serious meditation on humanity.
It understands its assignment.
Ben gets rabies.
People get trapped.
Chimp starts killing everybody.
Proceed.
But there is just enough sadness underneath the gore to make Ben feel different from a standard slasher villain.
The family’s late mother raised him.
He communicates with them.
He remembers Lucy.
They love him.
So when the attack begins, Lucy and Erin aren’t immediately dealing with some random creature.
They’re watching a family member become something terrifying.
That’s enough emotional weight.
We don’t need Ben standing under the moon contemplating the meaning of civilization.
Horror Tea Verdict
Primate is mean, fast and refreshingly uncomplicated.
The 89-minute runtime helps enormously because the movie doesn’t hang around long enough to wear out its premise.
Is everybody making genius-level decisions?
Absolutely not.
But if everybody made sensible choices, Ben would be quarantined at a veterinary facility and we’d have a twelve-minute movie.
The practical-effects work gives Ben a genuinely physical presence, and some of the kills are nasty enough that even seasoned horror fans may make that little:
“OOOOH!”
noise.
Rotten Tomatoes currently has Primate at 77% from 204 critic reviews and 69% from more than 1,000 verified audience ratings.
That feels about right.
It’s not trying to reinvent horror.
It’s trying to make you afraid of somebody saying:
“Don’t worry, he’s friendly.”
Mission accomplished.
Horror Tea Rating: ☕☕☕☕ out of 5
Fun, brutal, ridiculous in exactly the right places—and a powerful reminder that some animals do not need matching pajamas and a bedroom in your house.
Let Ben live outside.