Primate
All actors and roles (10)
All team (105)
Short description
A college student named Lucy returns to her family home in Hawaii for a vacation with her friends. The trip turns dangerous when the family pet, a chimpanzee named Ben, contracts rabies from another animal. The once-tame primate becomes a violent predator, forcing Lucy and her companions to fight for survival in an isolated setting.
This horror thriller was directed by Johannes Roberts, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Ernest Riera. Primate is the tenth film in Roberts' directing career, following his previous work on titles such as 47 Meters Down and Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. The movie features a cast including Johnny Sequoyah, Jessica Alexander, Troy Kotsur, Victoria Wyant, Gia Hunter, and Benjamin Cheng.
Produced by Paramount, Domain Entertainment, and 18Hz Productions, the film had a budget of 21 million USD and earned 41 million USD worldwide. On IMDb, it holds a rating of 5.8/10 from 22,000 votes, while its rating on TMDB is 6.5/10 based on 899 votes. Film critics gave the movie a rating of 6.4/10 from 195 reviews, which is slightly higher than the audience score on IMDb.
What's left behind the scenes
- Johannes Roberts admits that he was inspired by Stephen King's novel "Cujo" (1981) and its 1983 film adaptation. Roberts once noticed his mother's dog circling a pool. Emphasizing the difference between dogs and chimpanzees, Roberts described the film's concept as "truly unsettling" – dogs generally evoke sympathy in viewers, unlike chimpanzees.
- Troy Kotsur (who played Adam) later recounted that he specifically asked Johannes Roberts not to show him a mock-up of a disfigured corpse of one of the characters before filming began, so that his reaction to seeing it would be as genuine as possible.
- Troy Kotsur (he played Adam) recounted one incident that occurred immediately after filming wrapped. His character was covered in fake blood. At the end of the shooting day, he washed it off and headed to a restaurant, not noticing that his hands weren't completely clean. The waiter, seeing the bloodstains, asked in surprise what had happened.
- Ben the chimpanzee was played by Miguel Torres Umba. To portray him, the filmmakers employed a wide range of techniques, including prosthetics, puppets, animatronics, and more. Director and screenwriter Johannes Roberts claimed that the process was as complex as the filming of the horror movie Cujo, a remake of Lewis Teague's 1983 film. It was important for the creators to make Ben unique and recognizable, similar to Freddy Krueger, the antagonist from the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.
- According to Johannes Roberts, he and producers Walter Hamada and John Hodge practically rewrote the entire script at the last moment. The project had begun 15 years earlier, and the script had long been completed, but it was decided to make plot revisions just one week before filming began.
- Johannes Roberts admitted that he drew the idea for the film from Stephen King's novel 'Cujo' (1981). Roberts once noticed his mother's dog circling a swimming pool. Roberts described the film's concept as 'really unpleasant'—dogs typically evoke sympathy from audiences, unlike chimpanzees.
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