Cujo with a Chimp

There are times when the intended object of a review defies the reviewer, at no fault of its own.

In this specific case the victor is Tom’s Crossing by Mark Z. Danielewski, a 1200-page, densely-written monster about teen boys on the run: Genuinely a horror novel, given the imprimatur of deep approval by Stephen King, written in dialect that includes wonky grammar and folksy dropped g’s in words like “speakin,” and absolutely a work of compelling genius, but I ran out of time not long into hackin (sic) through its trees, and I confess that with less than three weeks before deadline I brought it along on a cruise with the ambition of pummeling it further while lounging on deck or surrendering myself to bed at night. Alas, when I did have time and inclination to read I found myself resorting to the alternative book I brought along, which was lighter in both goddamned senses, prose density and physical heft. I have not given up on the novel permanently, and maybe I’ll cheat the definition of timeliness and get the review in my next column, three months hence, but maybe I won’t, even though I have sworn to not let this defeat be a permanent one. This is not a review—in specific not a slam. What I have read feels like a good book, even a great one, even if it fights back. You should attempt it yourself. I know I intend another go, but for now it misses the window.

I did read King Sorrow by Joe Hill, another epic novel, intending to pair it with discussion of the Danielewski, but my space this time will be at a premium, and so I merely say that it’s a goodie. Check it out.

Primate
Directed by Johannes Roberts
Distributed by Paramount.
Released September 18, 2025 (film festivals) / Theatrical release January 6, 2026

Today’s business is the theatrical film, Primate, which is, I should stress right away, not one of those horror movies that are later discussed with feverish admiration and flurries of worshipful adjectives. There were plenty of those in 2025, thank Goldwyn, a couple of them so accomplished that at this writing it seems like more than one of them have a solid shot at Oscar gold this year; movies that will not just scare the shit out of you but also provide your brain and your soul with material to chew afterward. I’ve written about a couple of them here, including Sinners. Hell, I praised one mere potboiler, Dangerous Animals, about a surfer chick contending with a serial killer who feeds his victims to sharks, as just a superior specimen of its kind. Primate, officially credited as a 2025 release even though it came out in the dumping ground of January—I’ll take its word for it—is neither. I can’t say it’s without some effective action, but it’s transcendent in no way, and leaves no psychic imprint.

What I note is that it’s a return to the format that was not so long ago the dominant form of American horror cinema, which is to say the kind that puts together a group of photogenic young hardbodies, gives them minimal edge, and then locks them up in a cabin, or similar dwelling, with someone or thing that wants to kill them. This is a formula that provides numbers, but usually not resonance, usually not atmosphere, and certainly not the sense that it’s about more than itself, not even to the point of illuminating the people it’s normally about. Here, the cabin is a lavish family home on the edge of an ocean cliff. A young woman returns from an active life elsewhere, with friends in tow, re-acquainting herself with her deaf loving father, her resentful younger sister, and the family’s pet chimpanzee, Ben, who has, apparently only two days ago, been bitten by a rabid mongoose and is already, at the onset, sinking into the madness of full-onset hydrophobia. (It doesn’t happen that fast.)

General comments here: The movie acknowledges that there is no endemic rabies in Hawaii. It also acknowledges that the presence of a mongoose is a mystery, one that is raised just to establish that the filmmakers know, they know, and then it is left unexplained. Some irresponsible mother-humping bastard brought a rabid mongoose into the state, and let it escape, and this is implied backstory, and to address this further is more world-building than the movie is willing to get into when there are jaws that need to be ripped off faces.

What is more pressing is that the movie doesn’t really need this accommodation, when anybody who knows anything knows that your sweet immature chimp will someday go through adolescence and will at that time become a genuinely dangerous animal capable of sudden, horrific rages. We live in a world where pet chimps have indeed been known to go berserk and maim or kill the very people who loved them, and this is not an isolated phenomenon, but one that has occurred multiple times, the animals biting off noses and genitals, blinding and disfiguring people when not actively killing them. In this world the safe lifespan of chimp pet ownership, a relatively safe endeavor only with juveniles, is about seven years, before owning them is effectively suicidal, and you don’t need an outside agency like rabies to explain it. The age limit is so specific that the bloody eruption has been known to happen at chimp birthday parties. The movie also takes care to explain that rabies causes fear of water to explain why the young folks at the house party can take refuge for so long in the family’s infinity swimming pool, and this, again, is something that did not need rabies to explain it, since chimpanzee muscle density makes them heavier than water and already afraid of immersion. (Some can be taught to wade, but swimming is beyond them.) During the movie I had time to wonder why the chimp didn’t just hurl deck furniture from a distance. Or at least its shit. Chimps do that too.

But instead the movie goes into all the rigamarole of rabies to explain the beloved Ben’s sudden violence and his fear of water, and thus a chimp doing what any chimp might on a bad Thursday. (This is insecure movie-maker behavior. I guarantee that at some point during development somebody spoke that sentence which contributes to so many bad movies, “People won’t get it.” Meet them halfway, Sparky. They got it with Nope.)

So we get lots of attempts among the young pretties to leave the pool and get help, as well as invited dudebro visitors to blithely walk in provide more opportunities for facial mutilation. The result is just about okay, I guess, with a few isolated set-pieces that are better than okay, notably a bit with a young lady hiding in a locked car and a chimp who has gotten his hands on a key fob. But the human characters mostly have no edge, whatsoever, and there’s no specific person of the targeted demographic age who possesses sufficient weight for a character arc of any kind. Bad things happen, and eventually it all ends, and we have recently had multiple vivid demonstrations, on film, that the form can do much better.

What makes even addressing Primate worth it at all is the one guy who gives it extra life: actor Troy Kotsur, who plays Adam, bestselling novelist and the guy who owns the house. (He’s clearly a long since “made it,” though he makes sounds that the prospective movie deal that has summoned him elsewhere is a career make-or-break.) Like Kotsur, who won an Oscar for Coda a few years back, Adam is deaf, a condition which complicates things when he returns from negotiations for a movie to check on the well-being of his daughters. He knows damn well that the situation might include an outbreak of rabies in a house that has a chimp that was recently bitten. Not alerting first responders long before he can get there himself, not even equipping himself with a weapon before walking through the front door, seems woefully stupid, and is. But it allows him to enter a home where he cannot know that people are screaming or where he can be alerted by the noises a once-trusted and now homicidal beast makes while we can see it approaching him from behind. This is effective as hell because the movie itself participates in a thing Kotsur is well-equipped to do by himself: first make sure we loved him unreservedly. This he does. The actor and the character are the movie’s only island of excellence.