Primate Movie Review

All right, it's 2026 and we have a brand new horror movie. Yeah! In January. Oh. But hey, last January, Companion came out and that film was awesome. But this new movie is from the director of Resident Evil Welcome to Raccoon City and 47 Meters Down Uncaged. Oh. So the question I'm here to answer today is this. Is Primate the new film that just released a surprise hit? Or an unsurprising ----? I'm going to tell you about it in a spoiler-free review. Let's begin. Say, if you find yourself enjoying the content, feel free to subscribe to Adam Does Movies. It's free of charge. I'm Adam. I do the movies. Let's talk Primate. What we're dealing with today is an R-rated hour and 29 minute film. Oh my god, that sounds good. Under 90 minutes, you're in and out of a horror flick? I like that. So many movies today waste our precious time meandering about. Just get to the meat of it. And you better believe this movie does. But it doesn't fast forward on anything in particular. It does have a nice pace to it. It builds up some characters before it breaks their bones down. The premise of Primate is incredibly simple and straightforward. We follow the main protagonist here, Lucy. I'm not familiar with the actress playing her, but she looks like a blend of three different ones. Brie Larson popped out a couple times for me and that's not a bad thing. She's finally heading home with a couple of friends to spend some nice time with her sister Erin and their father Adam. Well, would you look at that? I share the same name as her dad, Adam. He's a successful writer with a beautiful mansion and he's about to have his book series turned into a film. Well, our similarities have officially stopped. The man is also deaf. Ha! I got you on that one. I can hear perfectly. That was in poor taste. As luck wouldn't have it, he needs to take off for the weekend right when his beautiful daughter gets home. Good thing for her, they keep a chimp in the house that can keep her company. Actually, the chimp sleeps outside in his own little paddock, but he's free to roam the grounds whenever he sees fit. He's very much housebound. He's part of the family and his name is Ben. And not only is it bad timing for Lucy that her father's leaving right when she's getting home so they don't get to hang out, but also her chimpanzee brother Ben came down with a bad case of rabies and is now terrorizing everyone in the house. Which include her, her best friend, the best friend tag along, some dude, and a couple of fuckboys they met on the plane. Now, I know what you're thinking. Adam, enough with the foreplay. How is this movie? Well, it's pretty awesome. I, uh, I had a really good time with this one and I know what else you're thinking. How are the kills? How are the scares? How are the things that really make a horror film a horror film? The kills are vicious. They're brutal. It's like the director watched that scene from Nope and said, I want to make that movie. I want to make that film with the crazy chimp that kills everyone. And this director wisely keeps the camera on the carnage. There is a point early on that sets the stage perfectly where a person gets pulled away into the shadows and you hear the vicious sounds as he's getting pummeled to death by the chimp. And I thought, ah, kind of your lazy half-ass way to introduce the film where you show the kill off camera. You don't get to, oh, and then it peekaboos you at the last moment. I eat that up. It's telling you this isn't your basic by the numbers crap. People aren't making dumb choices. You're not getting frustrated. Well, yeah, that does happen. There is going to be some dumb choices that comes with the territory. I will say for the most part, this is a pretty intelligent bunch considering what they're dealing with right now. They find themselves between a chimp in a hard place and, you know, phones are in the other room and it's tough to get to because you got a crazed lunatic chimp on your ass. There's just a lot of things going against them. And the script has a fun time playing with these different elements, such as the deaf father, such as the douchebag drunk guys wandering around, such as putting our characters in a swimming pool with only one exit. As lovely as the ladies are to watch, there is unfortunately no nudity. So I, uh, yeah, might have to dock at a point for that, but we don't really keep score here. I just tell you whether or not a movie is a enjoyable experience and what you can expect. And for me, this was a very easy win. I went in not even knowing what I was watching. It was one of those mystery Monday movies at the AMC, Nicole Kidman comes out, tips the hat, winks at me, tells me to go get a Coca-Cola classic and a smile. And we sat back together and watched some carnage unfold for under 90 gorgeous minutes. Now that I've glazed this donut for a while, let me tell you a couple of slight negatives. Nothing that I would say, go cry to mom about, but enough for me to warn you, this film primarily primately takes place at night. You're going to get a good chunk of this picture, like an hour in mainly dark setting, which is not a problem. If you're at a decent theater with a good screen like I was, but I can see some of the shittier quality movie theaters, maybe having a hard time getting those colors to pop at night. And if you plan on waiting for this to hit streaming inevitably in two weeks, like all movies are these days, then definitely watch this one in a dark environment, not in the middle of the day, shutting the blinds is not going to be enough. Okay. You get any sort of hit of sun on that screen, any sort of natural light, it's game over. You're not going to see ----. The only other criticism I have is I don't know how they made that chimp look so real. And yeah, that's not actually a criticism. That's a, that's a veiled compliment. Normally in a movie like this, where you have a crazed animal on screen for a good amount of time, you're going to see some corners cut hell even in the aforementioned. Nope. That chimpanzee looked pretty CG and I love that movie, but in primate 2026, this thing looked about as real as it possibly could. I learned via that new fan dangled thing, the internet that it was a combination of practical NCG elements that brought this chimp to life. I really couldn't find any further evidence outside of the five seconds I took to look before filming, but yeah, it definitely worked whatever whiz bang magicry is going on behind the scenes. And so did this film kept a very good clip the whole time. The stupidity was kept at a minimum, a little bit here and there, but you can't, you can't expect people to be perfect. Who's going to be perfect in a scenario like this? Mistakes are going to be made. I leave a pretty wide birth for these people to do such before I get annoyed. And even though the visuals are not the most exciting thing to play out, the blocking is great. The way that they move the camera around these scenarios, the way that they frame up the antagonist in different vantages, it's all working. It's all great. And I want you to Mark your calendar for January 5th. It's the first movie I saw in 2026 that hit theaters. And so far we're one for one. It's going to be a good year, baby. Let me know your thoughts on this flick. If you're more excited to see it now that I gave it such a glowing review, or if you're less inclined to go because it does get pretty brutal at times, please leave a comment down below to help the algorithm again, sub to the show. Adam does movies like the video, share it around, tell your mom. I'm sure she'd love it here. And hopefully I see you next time. Take care.