‘Primate’ gets chilling trailer, bringing horror to Hawaii with ‘Dexter: New Blood’ star
Johannes Roberts' latest is a survival horror. The new trailer of Paramount's 'Primate' brings horror in the form of a chimpanzee named Ben. Co-written with Ernest Riera, the latest horror flick promises the chills with the clip showing how a pet turns the lives of a group of friends' tropical vacation in Hawaii into a bloodbath. The trailer comes after Paramount renewed its deal with production house Walter Hamada. The latter are known for their focus on horror films, with 'The Conjuring' as one of their major projects.
The clip opens with a group of girls looking forward to a good time in Hawaii. One of them introduces the rest to Ben, an intelligent chimp. While he's accepted warmly by the gang at first, things turn gory when Ben decides to strike, gripping fear as he goes on a murder spree. The official synopsis reads, "A group of friends’ tropical vacation turns into a terrifying, primal tale of horror and survival." The film stars Troy Kotsur, Victoria Wyant, Gia Hunter, Benjamin Cheng, Johnny Sequoyah, Jessica Alexander, Charlie Mann, and Tienne Simon.
Bloody Disgusting gave the film a positive review, saying, "Roberts’ latest is a lean, mean horror throwback, wearing its influences on its sleeves while managing to inject enough freshness into the familiar concept through slick technical precision and a constant mounting of dread and death. It’s also not without humor. Primate may take its crazed beast with utmost seriousness, but it’s not afraid to get playful with its concept either."
Speaking to the outlet, director Roberts revealed some of the challenges, and one of them was finding a chimp that would make the difference between being a pet and a villain. "The tricky thing was to create a chimpanzee that you don’t go, ‘Oh my God, these people are insane to have this monster in their house.‘ That was probably my biggest worry of the whole movie, which was that when we tested it that first time, the audience would go, ‘Yeah, this is scary. Yeah, this is great, but why the fuck do these people have a chimpanzee in their house?‘ And they didn’t."
He further added, "Because once that goes into people’s minds, then it’s very hard to follow the rest of the movie. You needed to fall in love with Ben to a certain degree and then be terrified of him. So we really had to hit that sweet spot of how old he was, how scary-looking he was, and all that. An awful lot of thought process and design went into Millennium FX‘s side to create that ideal chimpanzee."
'Primate' is set to release on January 9, 2026.
