Paramount’s killer chimp movie Primate is gearing up to kick off 2026 with a crowd-pleasing adrenaline rush at the box office, an even bigger thrill considering its concept was a risky one.

The latest by director Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down, The Strangers: Prey at Night) turns a family’s beloved and adorable pet into a vicious monster thanks to a cruel disease, presenting clear challenges when it comes to getting audiences on board.

“It was a huge concern at the beginning and was a real issue in green-lighting the movie,” Roberts tells Bloody Disgusting ahead of the trailer launch. “Because it was like, are the audience going to turn against us? Are they going to feel sorry for Ben? We got the green light and we went ahead and did it.”

Ben, the sweet chimp turned rabid killer at the center of Primate, impresses. Roberts employed old-school practical effects to bring his killer chimp to life on screen, to awe-inspiring effect.

Roberts explains, “When I first met Walter Hamada, the producer, and we talked about it, he asked, ‘How are we going to do the chimp?’ I showed him some behind-the-scenes producer footage of the 47 Meters Down movies. His good friend, James Harris, had just done this movie called He Went That Way, with Zachary Quinto and Jacob Elordi with a chimpanzee, He’d shown me some of the R&D stuff that they’d done to create the chimp, which had been a little girl who was the daughter of Terry Notary, the big chimp guy who does all the chimp stuff. So, I’d shown it to Walter and he was really keen to go practical.”

Johnny Sequoyah as “Lucy” and Director Johannes Roberts in Primate from Paramount Pictures.

“It was sold all the way from the beginning to make a practical movie,” Roberts continues. “We did a little test to show the studio, and they loved it. Then we just had to find the right person, because you needed someone as small as a child but with the physicality of a chimpanzee who could be vicious and aggressive and be able to overpower anyone or people, more than one person. So we had to find that person.

“This movie comes from Cujo, it wears its influences on its sleeve, and that is the ultimate practical movie because of the different ways that they do Cujo with the dogs; different dog suits, guys in suits, animatronics, all that kind of stuff. We really followed that path.”

While it was an easy choice to go practical for the chimp effects, it took a lot longer to land on Ben’s design and find the right balance between pet and villain.

“The tricky thing was to create a chimpanzee that you don’t go, ‘Oh my God, these people are insane to have this monster in their house.‘ That was probably my biggest worry of the whole movie, which was that when we tested it that first time, the audience would go, ‘Yeah, this is scary. Yeah, this is great, but why the fuck do these people have a chimpanzee in their house?‘ And they didn’t,” Roberts explains. “Because once that goes into people’s minds, then it’s very hard to follow the rest of the movie. You needed to fall in love with Ben to a certain degree and then be terrified of him. So we really had to hit that sweet spot of how old he was, how scary-looking he was, and all that. An awful lot of thought process and design went into Millennium FX‘s side to create that ideal chimpanzee.“

Ben’s design and execution go far in immersing you in the horror, but it’s Roberts’ signature suspense that frequently leaves you on the edge of your seat when Ben begins his descent into terrifying madness.

“Do you know what? I think it’s gut instinct,“ Roberts reflects on his ability to wring tension from just about any sequence. “It’s funny, I was thinking the other day, I have a six and a half year old daughter, and I’m constantly playing pranks on her, and she does the same to me. It occurred to me, because I have two younger sisters as well, that it comes from your upbringing in terms of constantly wanting to make people jump and get a reaction. I love it when I watch a movie and I am completely manipulated by the filmmaker. It’s a great feeling to feel the suspense, to feel dread, to be scared; it’s such a wonderful feeling. It was what I first felt when I watched Cujo, it’s so clever in the way it manipulates the audience.”

Victoria Wyant as “Kate”, Jessica Alexander as “Hannah”, Gia Hunter as “Erin”, and Johnny Sequoyah as “Lucy” in Primate from Paramount Pictures.

Fans of Roberts’ work will notice straightaway a key fixture of the trailer and the film itself is that a swimming pool serves as a central set piece; rabies causes, among many things, hydrophobia. 

“I love water, obviously,“ Roberts confirms. “Everything I do has water in it. I love the idea of this aqua blue pool, the cliffside, and the endless ocean, and just this idyllic location that then becomes your worst nightmare. It was just this wonderful visual of the greens of the forest, and just never finding a way out of this nightmare. A beautiful set. Simon Bowles, the production designer, did amazing, amazing work.”

As suspenseful and intense as Primate can be, it’s never without a sense of humor. Roberts understands how absurd this premise can be and leans into it in the most entertaining ways. For the horror director, comedy and horror make perfect bedfellows.

“I’ve always felt the two things go hand in hand. I don’t like comedy horror at all. It’s a genre that I really don’t get,” he details. “But I love horror that has humor. I’m an unashamed John Carpenter fan, and one of my favorite things about his work is that there is always a real humor in everything. You watch Assault in Precinct 13, and it is just so wonderfully funny as well as being a super-tense siege movie. The preposterousness of the whole scenario, the pressure cooker thing, brings in humor and the madness of it all. Weirdly, I feel that with Primate, it is quite a playful movie. Although it’s very extreme, it is quite playful, and I watch it and never think it’s particularly nasty. I always think it’s just mental.“

Primate releases in theaters January 9, 2026.