'Primate' trivia and fun facts
The Shining
When Ben breaks into the closet he pushes his face through the hole he broke in the door, recreating the famous scene of Jack breaking down the bathroom in The Shining as is seen on the cover of the movie
Deaf
Troy Kotsur, who plays Lucy's deaf father Adam, is himself deaf.
Troy Kotsur
Troy Kotsur confirmed that he asked Johannes (the director) to conceal the prop of a character's mutilated corpse until shooting so his reaction would be genuine.
Stephen King
Director Johannes Roberts is entirely open about the idea for the film coming from Stephen King's 1981 novel and 1983 movie adaptation Cujo, about a mother and child trying to survive when their rabid Saint Bernard attacks them. "I'm a massive, massive Stephen King fan, and a massive fan of Cujo," Roberts said. He explained that watching his mother's pet dog circling the family swimming pool inspired the movie, where Sequoyah's character Lucy and her friends take refuge in a swimming pool, knowing Ben can't swim, and that his hydrophobia will keep him away from the water. "It just seemed like a really, really unpleasant idea," Roberts said. "A dog, you kind of feel a sympathy with. But chimpanzees? I just think they're scary. Dogs are one thing, but chimpanzees are little f*cking s*its."
Hawaii
Hawaii is the only state in the US where there is no rabies.
Practical effects
The chimp effects in the movie are mostly practical, director Johannes Roberts said: Ben is played by an actor, Miguel Torres Umba, and the filmmaking team used prosthetics and puppetry to make him into a convincing, frightening animal. "We did build all these animatronics, sculpts and stuff there's like a million different things we used there. If any of you have seen a behind-the-scenes of Cujo, seen all the different varieties of things that happened on that, [it's] that kind of thing. I could go on for ages about how the different crazy things we bought, but for me, the big thing was, he had to have a personality. I wanted, in a sense, almost Freddy Krueger."
Illegal
It is actually illegal to own a pet chimpanzee in Hawaii.