If you watched the ‘Gordy’s House’ segments of Jordan Peele’s Nope and found yourself siding with the chimp, then boy do we have a film to show you. Directed by 47 Metres Down and Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City director Johannes Roberts, Primate is a Hawaiian island set survival horror joint in which the killer isn’t a hockey mask wearing psychopath, the knife-wielding embodiment of evil itself, or a claw-gloved child killer, but rather a chimpanzee called Ben who’s very sweet… until he isn’t. Check out the trailer below;

Could this be the world’s first simian slasher? Sure, technically our pal Ben doesn’t look to be doing his dark deeds with a knife, but what else is he if not a menacing shape in the shadows, a furrier Michael Myers? While this first trailer for Primate smartly swerves revealing what it is that turns Ben from amiable ape to murderous monkey (yes, cladistically speaking, all apes are monkeys actually), we do see him, er, going ape on Johnny Sequoyah, Jessica Alexander, Victoria Wyant, Gia Hunter, and their pals. From menacingly pressing the ‘Bad’ button on a tablet, to violently snapping an arm, to popping up in the passenger’s seat of his soon-to-be victims’ cars, Ben is up to some nefarious monkey business here in the worst way — and we are here for it.

Having made a splash on the genre festival circuit over the last year already, early signs are promising that Primate — which, it’s worth noting, co-stars Oscar winning CODA star Troy Kotsur — will be another chimp off the old block for fun yet frightening creature-based horror features. We’ll see who — if anyone — survives Ben’s rage when Johannes Roberts’ latest hits cinemas in January 2026.