Sitges 2025: Johannes Roberts’ ‘Primate’ is a brutal horror of an angry chimpanzee
Sitges 2025: Johannes Roberts’ ‘Primate’ is a brutal horror of an angry chimpanzee
by Alex Billington
October 13, 2025
A brand new movie about monkeys is coming to theaters soon. Although this one is definitely not for the faint of heart. Primate is a bizarre, brutal and wild new horror film from the genre filmmaker Johannes Roberts. After premiering at this year’s Fantastic Fest & Beyond Fest, it will then screen at the 2025 Sitges Film Festival and other festivals around the world before hitting theaters in January next year. Roberts is already a veteran of horror cinema – he also directed both 47 meters lower movies about sharks, as well as Forest of the Damned, Storage 24, The other side of the door, Strangers: prey at nightand that of 2021 Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. Primate is something new – although it seems like a familiar concept, about a usually calm and cuddly pet transforming into an evil killing machine, we’ve never seen a horror film like this before. Which is an exciting experience. A chimpanzee living with a family in their beautiful, huge house on a cliff in Hawaii contracts rabies and goes mad, stalking and murdering the people there. It’s as cheesy as any good horror movie should to be, but also crazy, scary and disturbing to watch. I had a blast with this.
This film plays as if the Planet of the Apes The Alternate Universe Society made its own horror film about a chimpanzee going crazy and killing humans. Primate is directed by Johannes Roberts, with a screenplay co-written by Ernest Riera and Johannes Roberts. Actress Johnny Sequoyah plays Lucy, daughter of a wildlife researcher and writer, who returns home to Hawaii. His father, played by Troy Kotsurgoes on a weekend away and invites his friends to come hang out and party. When their pet chimpanzee catches rabies, he becomes vicious and attacks them and anyone who comes near him. So they hide in the pool and try to figure out how to outwit and get around the chimpanzee. But he became a nasty bastard – with extraordinary strength and ability to climb around the house. This movie as a whole is way better than it should be! Featuring bone-chilling horror cinematography and exceptionally creative cinematography (so many great DP shots Stephen Murphy), extremely screwed up kills a lot. However, it remains very entertaining. The right amount of comedy with pure intensity + mostly bloody violence. I even think the clichéd horror stuff works as a levity and as an homage to how fun and cheesy horror can be even though it’s still scary to watch.
It’s the chaos of chimpanzee rage! I’m very impressed with the quality of the cinematography and how they executed this concept. The angry chimp in this movie doesn’t look like it’s all CGI, there are too many scenes that look real. But it can’t be a real chimpanzee either, there’s no way they could make a real living chimpanzee act and behave like this while viciously attacking people. Plus, Hollywood rules for animal safety would never allow it. So it must be a man in a suit concept? Someone plays this chimpanzee and acts like him? Following the recent Planet of the Apes films, it seems entirely possible. It’s the only way they can make it all look and feel SO damn real. Well done if that’s how they did it. And anyway, it’s not even a question of realism. The best shots in the film are all of the rabies-infested chimpanzee, so deranged and so evil that even Michael Myers would tremble beneath his mask. It could be affirmed that Primate contains commentary on the dangers of having wild animals as pets, not to mention animal safety in general and how to stop a runaway animal before it harms anyone or anything. But that’s thinking too much. This is actually a fun horror movie concept that succeeds as 89-minute escapist/totally crazy genre entertainment.
I also have to give an extra shout out. Troy Kotsur also plays the father (again) and honestly, this is my favorite Troy Kotsur performance since CODA. A number of really great scenes with him that play out almost perfectly. The way they use his muted POV is brilliant at times and it was also unexpected. I love him even more as an actor after that, and I didn’t think that was possible. They were so lucky to choose him. It might be too ridiculous for some viewers, but I think this horror movie with a chimpanzee gone crazy is totally awesome.
Alex’s Sitges 2025 rating: 8 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter – @firstshowing / Or Letterboxd – @firstshowing
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