{"id":11601,"date":"2026-04-17T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/?p=11601"},"modified":"2026-04-10T10:26:34","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T10:26:34","slug":"bloody-brutal-and-ridiculous-in-the-right-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/bloody-brutal-and-ridiculous-in-the-right-ways\/","title":{"rendered":"Bloody, Brutal, and Ridiculous in the Right Ways"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>5 Minute, 21 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>

MOVIE REVIEW
\nPrimate<\/strong>
\n –  <\/strong> <\/strong> <\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong> Horror, Thriller
\nYear Released: <\/strong>2025, Blu-ray 2026
\nRuntime: <\/strong>1h 32m
\nDirector(s): <\/strong>Johannes Roberts
\nWriter(s):<\/strong> Johannes Roberts, Ernest Riera
\nCast: <\/strong>Johnny Sequoyah, Jessica Alexander, Troy Kotsur, Victoria Wyant, Gia Hunter, Benjamin Cheng
\nWhere to Watch: <\/strong>available April 21, 2026, pre-order your copy here: www.moviesunlimited.com<\/a> or www.amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

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RAVING REVIEW: <\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>PRIMATE knows exactly what it wants to be, and that confidence goes a long way in making everything here work. This isn’t elevated horror pretending to have grander ambitions than it can support. It’s a killer-animal thriller built around a rabid chimpanzee tearing through a tropical getaway, and the film’s biggest strength is that it doesn’t waste time apologizing for how ridiculous that sounds. It commits to the setup, throws its cast into increasingly difficult situations they aren’t prepared for, and delivers the kind of creature-feature energy that makes up for a lot of the story’s thinner material.<\/p>\n

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That is part of what makes the film work as well as it does. Director\/co-writer Johannes Roberts has spent enough time around survival horror and stripped-down genre mechanics that he understands the value of momentum. PRIMATE doesn’t need an elaborate mythology, complicated character studies, or an overcooked metaphor to keep things moving at 100 mph. It needs tension, panic, blood, and a threat that feels dangerous enough to justify the escalating chaos. On that level, the movie absolutely delivers. Once it gets going, it’s lean, nasty, and usually pretty effective at keeping you in the moment.<\/p>\n

The best thing about the film is Ben. That sounds ridiculous to say about a rabid chimp, but the movie lives or dies based on whether the threat he poses works, and for the most part, it does. Ben feels physical and mean, giving the film real bite. There’s a ferocity to the attacks that helps the movie stand apart from more generic animal-horror entries. It isn’t just about something lurking in the shadows or appearing for jump scares. When Ben goes on the attack, the film sells the violence with enough force that the threat rarely feels abstract. It feels like the confrontation scenes in the newer PLANET OF THE APES films, if they hadn’t pulled back.<\/p>\n

That physicality matters because PRIMATE is at its best when it leans into the tactile side of horror. The gore hits, the damage feels real, and the action has a grimy quality that gives the movie more weight than a more effects-heavy approach might. There’s a real appreciation here for practical impact, for the messiness of bodies colliding, glass breaking, blood spraying, and panic setting in.<\/p>\n

Johnny Sequoyah carries one of the film's human characters well enough to keep things anchored. She makes for a solid lead because she doesn’t overcomplicate the role. The movie needs someone believable at the center, someone who can hold the audience’s attention while everything around her gets bloodier and dumber, and she does that. There’s enough urgency in her performance to keep the survival angle functioning, even when the script doesn’t give her a ton of complexity to work with.<\/p>\n

Troy Kotsur also adds a little extra presence to the material. Even in a film that’s primarily concerned with suspense and carnage, having someone in the cast who can bring a little gravitas helps. He gives the story a slightly stronger emotional base than it might have had otherwise, even if the screenplay doesn’t always capitalize on that as much as it could. The same goes for the larger ensemble. They’re not written with a lot of depth, but they’re useful enough as pieces on the board, which is honestly what a movie like this requires more than anything else.<\/p>\n

It’s fun, but it’s not especially groundbreaking. It’s intense, but not all that memorable once the blood dries. It has enough craft to avoid feeling cheap, but not enough depth to leave a larger impression. There’s a version of PRIMATE that could’ve pushed further into total madness, turning the whole thing into a mean-spirited, full-throttle nightmare with a stronger identity of its own. Instead, it mostly settles for being a solidly made genre piece that knows how to keep an audience entertained for ninety-ish minutes.<\/p>\n

A three out of five score here doesn’t mean it's not good. PRIMATE is a perfectly decent time for horror fans who know what they’re signing up for. It moves fast, hits hard, and gives you enough gnarly chimp-driven mayhem to justify the rental or purchase! That’s more than a lot of similar films manage. It just doesn’t do enough beyond that to become anything bigger than a solid blast of animal-horror chaos. PRIMATE may not be a genre game changer, but it is the kind of bloody, unpretentious creature feature that’s easy to enjoy when you meet it on its own terms.<\/p>\n

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[photo courtesy of ALLIANCE HOME ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES UNLIMITED]<\/em><\/p>\n

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MOVIE REVIEW Primate –      Genre: Horror, Thriller Year Released: 2025, Blu-ray 2026 Runtime: 1h 32m Director(s): Johannes Roberts Writer(s): Johannes Roberts, Ernest Riera Cast: Johnny Sequoyah, Jessica Alexander, Troy Kotsur, Victoria Wyant, Gia Hunter, Benjamin Cheng Where to Watch: available April 21, 2026, pre-order your copy here: www.moviesunlimited.com or www.amazon.com RAVING REVIEW: PRIMATE knows exactly what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11602,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}