Primate (Johannes Roberts, 2026)⭐⭐⭐

A cheap, cheerful and fairly well done creature feature about a pet chimp that goes ape crazy after contracting rabies.

If you know anything about chimpanzees - and particularly if you have seen Jordan Peele's NOPE, you will know that they are freakishly strong and capable of literally ripping your face from your skull. Sure enough, not two minutes in to the cold open and poor, uncredited, Rob Delany is having his face peeled agonisingly away by family pet, Ben (played in some shots by Miguel Torres Umba). Ben has been raised by the Pinborough family, whose now-dead matriarch was a linguistics professor and taught him to 'talk' using a soundboard.

We then flash back a few hours to meet the Family - eldest daughter Lucy, sister Erin and father Adam (played by the deaf actor Troy Kotsur, who one an Oscar for his performance in Coda) who is just heading away on a business trip. Never mind, I'm sure it won't matter that he has on him the high-pitched whistle that can control Ben when he has a tantrum!

Reader, it did matter.

Primate keeps the tension reasonably high with plenty of inventive ways for a chimp to kill a human as they survivors attempt to outwit and evade their PG Tips-loving antagonist. Equipping Ben with a sound board does let him make admittedly very creepy comments ()"Lucy... bad" being a particularly chilling interjection in the moment) but unfortunately the film gets a bit carried away with making Ben a monster and gives him a very un-chimplike understanding of things like car keys, as well as turning what should be fever-induced aggression into more calculating horror villainy.

Quibbles aside, this is a fun twist on the slasher genre.