“He Is the Freddy Krueger of Chimps”: ‘Primate’ Director Reveals Why His New Horror Movie Made Studios Nervous [Exclusive]

Summary

• Perri Nemiroff chats to Troy Kotsur, Johnny Sequoyha, and Johannes Roberts at Fantastic Fest 2025 for Primate .
• In the movie, Lucy’s family pet chimpanzee, Ben, contracts rabies and terrorizes her and her friends at a pool party.
• In this interview, the trio discuss horror movie influences, taking bold swings on a creature feature, how Kotsur’s role changed the movie for the better, and the creation of Ben.

Horror fans, you’re in for a treat next January, as 2026 kicks off with the hotly anticipated theatrical debut of Paramount Pictures’ Primate. Hailing from The Strangers: Prey at Night‘s Johannes Roberts, Primate follows a group of friends at a pool party that goes terribly wrong.

In the movie, Johnny Sequoyah, best known for her work on Dexter: New Blood, stars as Lucy, with Collider’s exclusive image release earlier this month showcasing just how frightening her ordeal is set to be. After returning home from college, Lucy and her friends find themselves terrorized by Lucy’s family pet, a chimpanzee called Ben who contracts rabies. Sequoyah is joined by Academy Award winner Troy Kotsur (CODA) who plays her father, as well as Jessica Alexander (The Little Mermaid), Victoria Wyant (My Fault: London), Gia Hunter (Sherlock & Daughter), and Charlie Mann (The Watchers).

A survival horror with all the trimmings, Primate is scheduled for theatrical release on January 9, 2026. However, it celebrated its official world premiere at this year’s 20th Anniversary of Fantastic Fest where Collider’s Perri Nemiroff sat with Roberts, Kotsur, and Sequoyah to talk all things Primate. From Jurassic Park influences in the movie to the realities of making a horror film, you can check out the full interview in the video above or in the transcript below.

How Stephen King’s ‘Cujo’ Inspired Johannes Roberts to Direct Horror

“A lightbulb went off in my head, and I was like, ‘I want to be able to do that.’”

PERRI NEMIROFF: I want to start with a question inspired by your director’s statement. I’m a big Stephen King fan, so when I feel a big old beating heart for something like Cujo, I’m definitely going to respond to it. Can you tell our audience a little bit about how Cujo inspired you? And for both of you, is there a horror movie that made you say to yourself, “I’ve got to get in the genre one day?”

JOHANNES ROBERTS: I had, as a kid, sort of graduated from Tolkien to King. I was in that sort of tween stage, so like aged 13, and someone gave me a copy of Cujo, which they’d recorded off the telly. I watched it and I just fell in love with it. I fell in love with the movie. I’m still in love with the movie entirely — the photography, the performance, the concept. And that moment where Dee Wallace is leaning down, trying to get the seatbelt, and it’s a point-of-view camera. I was 13, I didn’t know what a point-of-view was, but I knew that it was Cujo, and then Cujo comes, and then it’s not Cujo, and then Cujo comes out of the window… I just sat there, and as a kid, I was like, “They fucking tricked me,” and a lightbulb went off in my head, and I was like, “I want to be able to do that.” That became my passion then. I’ve made Cujo in many forms underwater, but this is hopefully my true homage to it.

TROY KOTSUR: When I was younger, the horror movie that really stuck with me was a movie called The Thing, directed by John Carpenter. I was only 12 years old when I was watching it in the theater. It was too much for me. It was so frightening. I was far too young to see it. You know, you have that feeling when you’re emotional and you’re scared and you’re uncomfortable in your seat — I think that traumatized me. And of course, all of Stephen King’s films and all the films based on his books were great as well.

JOHNNY SEQUOYAH: I mean, not to copy these two geniuses’ answers, but I will say I saw The Exorcist when I was about four, and that is purely just because I have two older brothers.

ROBERTS: I need to get my daughter into it.

SEQUOYAH: She would love it! I mean, she’s seen Primate. She’d probably love it.

KOTSUR: Hold on, wait, wait. I want to add something. The Exorcist is really scary because you’re hearing this high-pitched voice, right? And that’s a scary thing for hearing people, but it doesn’t scare me because I can’t hear it!

SEQUOYAH: [Laughs] That’s fair. I think about anything would have scared me at four. I was probably way too young to watch that, but when you have two older brothers, they don’t care. So, I have a really, really vivid memory of it actually being one of the first movies I ever watched.

Those memories are so important.

SEQUOYAH: They’re so important! I was in a basement in my family’s house in Idaho. It was very creepy already. So yeah, I have such a distinct memory of that. I think that horror movies impact you in a way that… I don’t know, it’s a certain impact, and that always was really fascinating to me, because I actually don’t remember being scared of Insidious when I watched it when I was four. I just remember being so fascinated by the experience of it. So, that’s just always been something that’s been interesting to me.

That was me and Scream.

You Won’t Find Any ‘Scream’ Homages in ‘Primate’

Jurassic Park, however, is another story.

Given two of my favorite movies of all time are Scream and Jurassic Park, I was wondering, are there deliberate Scream and Jurassic Park homages in your movie? Because there are two parts that really reminded me of those.

ROBERTS: Oh, really? It’s funny, I’m a little older in generations, and I found the Scream era didn’t work for me. In the ‘90s, Carpenter was doing, like, In the Mouth of Madness, and nobody was watching it. They didn’t understand it. Wes Craven was doing Scream, and I was like, “I don’t get it.” And I still don’t get it. I still don’t get that.

My heart!

ROBERTS: I know. I’ve never, any of them. But Jurassic Park, I mean, the skill of blending. That’s what this movie, the challenge has been really exciting. Spielberg is the master of blending. People always go on about the CGI in Jurassic Park, but it isn’t; it’s the blending of the animatronics and the puppets.

It’s the reach-out-and-touch-it vibe, which is exactly what your movie has.

ROBERTS: Again, those velociraptors are little shits! They’re little shits, you know? And that’s the important thing. I get really bored in monster movies because it’s just a monster, but in definitely the first Jurassic Park, it’s like, “Ah, you bastards!” So yes, Jurassic Park always. I’m humbled.

I have so many follow-up questions. The first point I wanted to make, though, is more like a dare. Because you said what you did about the Scream movies, that means you need to meet the challenge and ultimately, down the line, make a Scream movie yourself, or something akin to that where you play with meta slasher-ness.

SEQUOYAH: He would kill it.

ROBERTS: My sensibilities are somewhat old-fashioned, so like with The Strangers [Prey at Night], when we did The Strangers, it’s very old-fashioned. People are like, “Oh, he’s really meta with it,” and it wasn’t that I was meta; I was just doing the old movies. I don’t get the meta thing. It doesn’t work in my head.

I will respect that, but you are quite good at creature movies. And you are quite good with pools scenes! Some of my favorite pool scenes ever.

SEQUOYAH: I also just have to say, I think Johannes is so good at building suspense. When I got the job, I tried to watch 47 Meters Down, and the level of suspense, I honestly — I don’t know if I’ve even said this — I couldn’t get through it because it was so scary.

ROBERTS: A lot of people don’t get through it.

SEQUOYAH: But it was a respectful thing. I couldn’t get through it because it was actually giving me an anxiety attack. And I like surfing, so I also just can’t do shark things. But I just think that’s an ode to him. He’s so good at building suspense.

Oh, without a doubt. The pacing here truly is on point.

ROBERTS: Thank you.

The other follow-up question was when we were talking about Jurassic Park and you were describing the dinosaurs. It’s one thing that really fascinated me about your film. Can you tell us a little bit about striking the right balance between making Ben the villain of the movie, but also never letting us forget that he once was part of their family?

ROBERTS: Do you know what? This has been something, I think, that has made people very nervous in greenlighting the movie. It has been something where we’ve created the movie, and in directing the movie and then in actually editing, and holding that balance, where you get involved with the hatred. You need to be scared, but also there needs to be a sympathy and an empathy. The Cujo thing, the element of that was definitely the family, and then the bond with the family. It opens at full throttle, but then we take our time after that to create that sort of family element, and I think that that is key to then not just making it about kills, kills, kills, kills, and that strength there. Then, to me, it was: give him personality, and if he has personality, like if he is the Freddy Krueger of chimps, then great. When he pushes Nick over, and he’s like, “Hahaha,” you’re like, “You little shit!”

SEQUOYAH: That freaks me out watching it.

ROBERTS: You get involved in it. But there’s definitely a moment. It was funny, I’d not seen the movie for a little while, and watching it today, when he hugs you around the swimming pool, I was like, “God, that has worked well. That’s worked well.” You feel the descent into that madness a bit.

This Character Takes the Horror of ‘Primate’ Up a Notch

Troy Kotsur shares what it was like filming his first horror movie.

Troy, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe this is your very first horror movie.

KOTSUR: Yeah, that’s right.

What would you say surprised you most about the reality of making a horror movie and what it takes to film these scare scenes?

KOTSUR: I learned that it’s a lot of action. I mean, the fight scenes were phenomenal. It was really fun working with our stunt team. There was great choreography. And, of course, that took a lot of prep and a lot of planning. I never really experienced that type of a fight scene before. And of course, you need trust in your director and your cast members. You go through a lot of blood, doing it over and over again, so your clothes get heavier and heavier because they’re literally soaked in blood, and that actually even affected my sign language. I could feel the blood literally dripping off my fingers as I was signing sometimes. At first, I thought I would get a lot of cuts with the broken glass, but of course, it was like candy glass, right? So it looks real, but it doesn’t actually cut your skin, which is amazing. So, yeah, this was just a phenomenal experience, as far as my first horror movie goes.

At first, in the script, it was a hearing father. I’m wondering if the father was hearing, if it would be a big difference, and if the audience would have reacted differently, or without that layer, how interesting it would be. I think this really added a lot, having a father who happens to be deaf, because of course, if you hear the noises the chimpanzee makes, a hearing dad would react, but as a deaf father, I walk in completely clueless to what’s going on, and I think it makes it even more powerful. I can’t think of another horror movie that has those types of moments.

Scream Queen Johnny Sequoyah “Scared the Shit” Out of the Crew

She took a bold swing that paid off big-time.

Johnny, I warned you before I was going to bring this up. This is your first studio film. Is this also your first time as number one on the call sheet of a feature film?

SEQUOYAH: It is my second one. My first time was when I was about nine or 10 years old.

Oh, that’s different!

SEQUOYAH: It is different.

What did it mean to you to get to star in this movie after all that time, after going from nine to finally headlining a studio horror film now?

SEQUOYAH: Oh my god, I feel like it’s a dream. I don’t know if, as an actor, you ever believe that you ever do that kind of stuff, so it felt like a dream come true. I was just so grateful, honestly, because the cast was so incredible. Our team was so incredible that every day it just felt fun. It didn’t feel like there was that kind of pressure of, like, “Oh, you’re number one.” It just felt fun. So, honestly, I just feel like every day was just getting to play, and I had so much fun.

ROBERTS: I think I told you this, I’m pretty sure I told you this — Johnny was not at all who I imagined. I had someone very specific in mind. Johnny had come up, and I was like, “No, she’s not…” I’d seen her headshot, and I was like, “She’s not what I’m thinking.” And then, I remember, and it’s very rare that happens, came in, we did the casting, and said, “Bring her in anyhow.” I’m like, “Eh, whatever.” She came and did an audition, and it was just one of those where you left and everybody’s like, “Yeah. Okay. Well, that’s that one then!” So it’s a really interesting thing. She didn’t live up to it then.

SEQUOYAH: That’s like him to say that. I will say one cool thing about my audition is I did a self-tape, got a callback, and I was like, “Oh, that’s so cool.” I wasn’t expecting a callback. I went in, and all of the actors had to do one specific character’s death scene, and everyone in the cast, obviously besides Troy, had to do that audition scene. There was no scream in the scene, and I remember being in the callback and being like, “This is my chance to do my scream queen scream.”

ROBERTS: You scared the shit out of me.

SEQUOYAH: So at the end of this scene, I let out a scream. I remember watching the casting director, Johannes, and the producers. I literally saw all of them just jump, like levitate out of their seats, and then land back in their seats, and I was like, “Okay! Whether or not I get this, that was fucking cool.”

Johannes Roberts Gives the Rundown on Bringing Ben to Life

“It’s literally the oldest-school filmmaking you have ever seen.”

I can’t let you go, Johannes, without asking one question about the creation of Ben. Just absolutely phenomenal looking. I wrote in my Tweet before you all came into this room that it was practical creature work at its absolute finest. For our audience, can you break down exactly what goes into bringing Ben to life on screen?

ROBERTS: A lot. There’s not one specific way. You have, obviously, a person as a chimpanzee, and he was a chimp. He came in, again audition-wise, and he’d never done anything before, this guy. So, he did the performance and was just insane. Then you have that, so you have Johnny and Troy fighting the terror there, and then you have a mixture of just incredible animatronics and puppeteering and just this whole hybrid. It’s literally the oldest-school filmmaking you have ever seen. For me, it was just wonderful. On the first day of filming, I just got this, “Hey, Johannes.” I turn around and there’s this guy that worked on my very first movie 25 years ago, and he’s now a puppeteer. They had the little puppeteer team working rods and wires and stuff, and it was just incredible to be around them and just like, “No, more. Smile. I need more!” I could go on for ages. I wouldn’t want to ruin the mystique around it, but there was everything. There were different scales of everything, but its heart came from this guy who was as much of a shit as Ben was. [Laughs] The personality comes from a real personality.

Primate hits theaters on January 9, 2026.