Johannes Roberts doesn’t shy away from wearing his horror influences on his sleeve.
Not only does he refer to his new creature feature Primate as “my Cujo,” referencing the Stephen King novel about a rabid, murderous dog, but Roberts’ original script also featured a dog as the villain rather than Ben the rabid, murderous chimpanzee we get in the finished film.
Check out the full interview with Johannes Roberts below:
“It was much more like 47 Meters Down,” Roberts said, referencing the shark attack films he also wrote and directed. “The dog was impersonal, the way I dealt with it was almost like a shark. Once the dog had gone to the rabies stage, there was no thinking. Whereas, with the chimpanzee, with Ben, he’s turned mean. I think that’s the difference. The horror then comes out of of that malice, you know, and that’s what made it much more fun to me.”
Roberts is no stranger to the horror genre, though as a writer and director best known for the 47 Meters Down films and Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, his most popular villains have been mindless eating machines and forces of nature. Primate provided him with the opportunity to play with a villain that had “personality” and a “connection” with the other characters.
“With 47 Meters Down again, it’s a very contained, single-location thing, but the sharks just happen to be in the environment. And it’s about defeating the environment and getting from A to B,” Roberts explained. “Whereas [Primate] is a very personal thing. It’s the pet that you grew up with, that you loved, that is part of the family, and then has turned into something evil and it’s coming specifically for you. So it’s very personal, you know, it’s very based on his personality.”
Primate certainly isn’t the first horror film to feature hapless humans facing off against the raw power of nature and being utterly mangled for their troubles, yet the film still manages to be delightfully surprising with its gory, bloody destruction. Roberts believes that the secret to keeping things fresh in the horror genre lies in keeping them simple.
“But finding something simple is the hardest thing in the world, you know?” he said. “Sometimes it works and you just find that concept, but it’s keeping it simple and and making people buy into the world you’re in. Even if it’s a movie world, they buy into that world, and… once they’re engaged, you can push them. Then when the pain starts happening, you’re part of it. You’re part of that world.”