How The ‘Primate’ Creature Performer Brought Killer Chimp Ben To Life On Screen

Director Johannes Roberts opted for old school practical effects as much as possible with Primate, including a killer chimp played by a creature performer.

An impossibly adorable family pet, Ben, transforms into a terrifying predator via stunning practical effects from Millennium FX. But it’s movement specialist Miguel Torres Umba who inhabits the creature suit and imbues Ben with a cuddly then unsettling personality.

It turns out that Umba was a rare find who completely unlocked Ben as the film’s formidable antagonist.

“We’d done this test for the idea of going practical,” Johannes Roberts told Bloody Disgusting. “We had a rough suit. As the creature, we’d used this 14-year-old girl to just test the suit out for the scale and see that it worked. And it was great, but she just didn’t have the physicality that you need. She was very good. She was the daughter of a creature performer and was excellent, but didn’t have the physicality. So, we were like, ‘Okay, well, we need the physicality, but we can’t have the Rock as a chimpanzee’ kind of thing. So, we did an open casting and then Miguel just came in, never done anything before, and he just blew the doors off.”

The filmmaker recalls his creature performer’s audition. “There was this bar that was sticking out of the wall, and he just leapt up, climbed all the way up the wall, was hooting and hollering, and then jumped all the way down. It was just like, ‘Oh, yeah, this is the guy.’ He just went full chimp. He went there. Don’t know if he’s ever come back. That just changed the movie from that moment on, really, because the chimp then wasn’t just a shape or a background thing. It was a personality, and the scenes just evolved from that.”

Jessica Alexander as “Hannah” and Miguel Torres Umba as “Ben” in Primate from Paramount Pictures.

Also critical to Primate‘s success is the way that Ben initially endears himself as the sweet pet heavily bonded to his family, before his harrowing turn. Roberts details how Torres Umba stayed in character the entire production, which not only helped his scene partners immerse themselves in the scene but gave Roberts plenty to work with on camera.

Roberts said, “He was there with every blocking, every rehearsal. They would have a chimp there. The actors would have Miguel being full chimp, and then we could work out the scenes. He very rarely would be around anybody not being the chimp. You would never see Miguel-Miguel. That just helped completely. What was great was that you could block the scenes out with the actors, and you would just know that the wild card in it was Miguel. I would just know that wherever I had my camera, I’d just be like, ‘Well, I’m going to put Miguel in this now, and I don’t know what the hell is going to happen.’ It would just send things off in strange ways. And sometimes it worked. Sometimes you’d completely miss it, because they’d gone a different direction, whatever. But it would be a really fun bomb to drop in there.

“He would just suddenly pick up a thing and put it on his head or he’d throw a ball,” Roberts continued. “It would just be about feeding him, throwing stuff in. If I put that in there, I think he’ll go for that, and he’ll play for that. But you’d never try to corner him. You just let him go, but try and give him as many toys or opportunities to play, really.” Roberts also highlights just how tough the role was, with the animatronics adding weight to an already hot, sweaty suit, and has nothing but praise for Torres Umba’s work.

But “play” becomes the operative word with a film like Primate, and Roberts had an absolute blast making it. The idea of playing in this type of sandbox again is exciting for the filmmaker. “Oh my God, it was so fun to be doing a studio movie, but it’s all practical on a stage. You’ve built the sets, you’ve got the forest, and the matte paintings, and you’ve got a guy in a suit with the animatronics.

“I hope it connects with the audience this weekend, and let’s see where that world goes from there. But definitely, this is exactly the movie that I always want to make.“

Miguel Torres Umba as “Ben” in Primate from Paramount Pictures.