2026's First Horror Gem Is About a Freddy Krueger-Like Chimp: Here's How They Did It

3 days ago 7

Perri Nemiroff is the 2025 Press Award winner at the ICG Publicists Awards.

She's the senior producer at Collider where she hosts and produces the interview series, Collider Ladies Night, a show geared towards highlighting the need-to-know female voices in film and television.

On top of that, Perri frequently moderates post-screening Q&As and panels at film festivals and conventions including San Diego Comic-Con and New York Comic Con, and can be seen on the big screen in the Noovie pre-show segment, Close-up with Perri Nemiroff. She’s also a Top Critic on Rotten Tomatoes, a proud member of the Critics Choice Association and is a Gold Derby Expert.

Perri splits her time between Los Angeles and New York. Wherever the film and television coverage takes her, she goes!

Summary

Welcome to a new episode of Collider Ladies Night with Primate star Johnny Sequoyah.
During her Ladies Night conversation with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, Sequoyah looks back on getting her start as a child actor, and what it was like overcoming setbacks as she made her way in the industry.
She also goes into detail on the incredible movie magic that went into creating Primate’s killer chimp, Ben.

A mere week into the New Year and we already have a new release that’ll likely wind up being one of the best horror movies of 2026.

Johnny Sequoyah leads Johannes Roberts’ Primate as Lucy. While visiting her father (Troy Kotsur) and sister (Gia Hunter) back home in Hawaii, another family member of Lucy's takes a turn — their chimp, Ben. Ben is bitten by a rabid mongoose. While Lucy and her friends enjoy the family pool and dream-like views, Ben loses himself to the sickness and becomes, as Roberts put it, “the Freddy Krueger of chimps,” and brutally starts picking them off one by one.

With Primate playing in theaters nationwide, Sequoyah swung by the Collider Ladies Night studio to dig into her journey, including highs like working with a legend like Alfonso Cuarón, and also the lows of being recast in a show. On top of that, Sequoyah offered up a behind-the-scenes look at the staggeringly impressive movie magic required to create her Primate scene partner, Ben the killer chimp.

‘Primate’s Killer Chimp Was Made with Nearly Zero VFX

"This is old-school moviemaking. It's practical."

Advancements in performance capture and digital effects are staggering. In fact, one might think that team Primate would go that route in order to bring Ben to screen. Director Johannes Roberts, however, had a different plan in mind.

After booking the role, Sequoyah had one key question for Roberts — how? “He pulls out this chimp mask. He's like, ‘We're doing it practical.’ And I was like, ‘Okay. What does that mean, though?’ He's like, ‘It's practical. It's going to be a suit.’ Mind blown, obviously, but you still don't know what to expect.”

Things came into focus more when Sequoyah met Miguel Torres Umba, the actor who’d be portraying Ben. “Can we just have a round of applause for Miguel, who plays Ben, and also for the effects team?” Sequoyah continued:

“I met Miguel, and it was so cool. The whole thing is so cool because I get to actually work with an actor who I'm building the relationship of Ben and Lucy with, and it's not AI. It's not even really VFX. This is old-school moviemaking. It's practical.”

Sequoyah added, “I just heard Walter [Hamada], our producer, saying this; there’s literally very, very minimal VFX in the entire movie.” Whether you’re into the horror genre or not, Sequoyah dubs Primate a must-watch for anyone with an appreciation for movie magic. “Even if you're not a horror fan, that is enough of a reason to go and see the film, just because the way that they pulled it off is unbelievable, honestly. I was shocked watching it.”

Johnny Sequoyah Explains Exactly How They Created Ben on Set

There are far more pieces to Ben than you'd expect!

Sequoyah offered up a complete breakdown of all the pieces required to bring Ben to life on set:

“His legs go on, and then the arms and the torso go on, which is a whole separate piece, and then the head. Then there are three different heads. Then, the actual chimp suit itself, I think, took over 50 people to make. So, on set, you have an entire team that's just for his saliva in the mouth. We have an entire team that is the puppeteering mask team that is literally just focusing on the facial expressions, moving them live while we're filming. Insane. It's insane! And then, obviously, the chimp has his own hair and makeup and wardrobe, so they're making sure that his shirt looks good. There are people who work the arms, just the legs. It's such an unbelievable team. Hats off to them because they just absolutely destroyed it.”

Troy Kotsur, Johnny Sequoyah And Johannes Roberts Talk Primate

Not only did Umba and Ben’s effects team soar with their work, but so did Sequoyah. Check out our full Collider Ladies Night conversation in the video at the top of this article to hear all about some of her earliest big gigs, like starring in the NBC show Believe and having a role in Dexter: New Blood, and also what it was like making the leap to her very first starring role in a studio film with Primate. If the quality of her work in this new release is any indication, there could and should be many similar opportunities for her on the horizon.

Primate is now playing in theaters nationwide.