If any film critic knows his animal creature features, it's Matt Donato. So when the opportunity arose to record a short episode on Johannes Roberts's Primate, the new killer monkey movie that's part slasher and part creature feature, we knew we had to make it happen. In this episode of the podcast, we weigh in on Primate while also comparing it to the animal horror movies (cough Anaconda cough) that aren't willing to do the work to keep the terror grounded.
After the death of her mother, it takes Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) a full year to gather the courage to head back home. She’s missed by those she left behind: her father (Troy Kotsur), her sister (Gia Hunter), and Ben, the chimpanzee that her mother raised from a young age. But when Ben gets bitten by a rabies-infected mongoose, grief will have to wait – now Lucy and her childhood friends are trapped in a dangerous game of cat and mouse with Ben, who has developed a literal and figurative taste for blood. Primate, the new film from horror filmmaker Johannes Roberts, is a cross between a creature feature and a slasher with style to spare.
In this short excerpt from the episode, Matt Donato explains how Primate continues to show off Roberts's high cinematic IQ:
This movie isn't even just Cujo. It's Halloween, but not Michael Myers. There are overt references to Halloween in this movie, and the way he becomes the shape, that I fucking love. And it's also littered with Jurassic Park references. So you get the right type of comparisons – Roberts as a director and where he's drawing inspiration from. He's got all the right inspirations.
The Primate episode of the Certified Forgotten podcast is now available to stream on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, or the podcast platform of your choice.
