There is a school of thought which states the scariest 43 seconds of Jordan Peele’s Nope belong to the first moments when a chimpanzee has a child cornered. If you’re of that persuasion, then Johannes Roberts’ Primate offers a brutal expansion of that dread to feature length, now with the gory bits painstakingly filled in.

Premiering with a a buzz of shrieks and nervous titters at the opening night of Fantastic Fest last week, Primate displays a commitment that borders on tunnel vision in its delivery of sadistic set pieces and simian-on-simian savagery. Roberts, the promising genre director of 47 Metres Down —back before he got waylaid by studio box-checking in Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City — was on hand in Austin to state he considers Stephen King’s Cujo a maj

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