In the horror film “PRIMATE,” filmmakers relied heavily on practical effects to create Ben the chimpanzee, portrayed by actor and movement specialist Miguel Torres Umba.
Director Johannes Roberts has built a reputation in genre filmmaking for favoring physical threat over spectacle, placing audiences close to danger rather than distancing them through digital effects. In “PRIMATE,” that approach shaped a key creative decision early in pre-production: whenever possible, scenes would be realized using practical, in-camera effects rather than computer-generated imagery.
“A movie like this requires a feeling of immediacy,” Roberts said. “We wanted the actors to react to something real. A real chimp, of course, would be dangerous, so we had to find another way.”
That solution came through a collaboration with Millennium FX, a prosthetics and animatronics studio known for its practical creature work. The team developed a custom chimpanzee suit for Torres Umba, designed to allow both performance flexibility and physical credibility on screen.
“The beauty of their work combined with Miguel’s commitment to the role made it possible to achieve very detailed and graphic sequences,” Roberts said.
Millennium FX co-directors Neill Gorton and Kate Walshe, along with Rob Mayor, led a team of more than 50 artists and craftspeople in building the suit. According to Gorton, the goal was to strike a balance between realism and performance.
“Our job was to make Ben feel tangible and believable,” Gorton said. “He had to be sympathetic, but also capable of becoming dangerous. That meant allowing freedom of movement while maintaining physical accuracy.”
Time constraints added to the challenge. Once Torres Umba was confirmed, the team had five weeks to prepare the first camera-ready prototype.
“For the earliest test, parts of it were literally held together with string and tape,” Gorton said. “But once we saw it paired with Miguel’s performance, we knew we had something workable.”
Multiple heads were built for different sequences. One allowed for detailed mouth and lip movement, controlled by puppeteers manipulating facial elements such as the eyebrows and nostrils. Another head was designed specifically for attack scenes, while simplified versions were created for stunts and confined spaces.
Costume maintenance continued throughout production. Walshe said the suit used hand-dyed yak hair, individually punched into stretch mesh to achieve the correct direction and texture.
“Every morning, we’d place the pieces on a form of the actor, brush and style them, and make adjustments,” she said. “It became part of the daily routine on set.”
For Torres Umba, the physicality of the suit shaped how he approached the role.
“The story draws you into seeing Ben as part of a family,” he said. “That connection makes the later transformation unsettling. There’s always a sense of hope that things might be okay, which makes the turn more difficult to watch.” / PR S