Primate review
By Joel Humphries · Watched 01.05.26
★★ 2 / 5
Spoiler-free review
Primate resembles a stripped-down Planet of the Apes with the heart, social commentary and intelligence removed, leaving eighty minutes of an animatronic-looking monkey tearing through people trapped in a house. Death of a Unicorn built comparable creature chaos into dark fantasy, satire and actual jokes; this is the joyless version, all blood and no personality. By its midpoint, survival horror has curdled into something closer to a snuff film, with brutality serving neither an idea nor even much fun. There is nothing edifying or interesting enough here to justify sitting through it.
Full review — contains spoilers
Primate feels like someone tried to make a Planet of the Apes redux but stripped out the heart, and the social commentary, and left nothing but senseless brutality. This is eighty minutes of an animatronic-looking evil monkey raging through a house and tearing people apart, a bare-bones survival setup that never grows into anything more.
It reminded me of Death of a Unicorn, which has a similar “trapped in a house with a rage-driven beast” premise and is also gory and ridiculous, but at least Unicorn is trying to be a dark fantasy horror comedy, with satire and actual jokes built around its killer-creature concept. Primate feels like the joyless version of that idea, all blood and no brains, as if someone saw the creature chaos in Death of a Unicorn and said, “What if we did this without any of the fun or personality?”
By the midpoint it basically turns into a snuff film, with nothing edifying or interesting about sitting through it. I wouldn’t recommend this.