Primate Ending Explained: What Happens to Ben After Stephen King Inspired the Ending?

Inspired by Stephen King's novel, Johannes Roberts’ Primate goes wild with the rabid chimpanzee and its terrifying rampage, killing many.

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Paramount Pictures’ animal-attack horror movie, Primate, directed by Johannes Roberts, has already hit theaters on January 9, 2026, following its premiere at Fantastic Fest in September 2025. And the movie is being hailed as a brutal survival horror that doesn’t pull its punches. Instead, it leaves viewers shaken and full of questions, especially about Ben, the chimpanzee at the center of the chaos.

Inspired by Stephen King’s Cujo, Roberts’ film starts as a family reunion at a remote Hawaiian home, which quickly spirals into a nightmare, as Ben goes feral after a rabid mongoose attack. Now, as Ben slowly turns into something terrifying, the family’s failure to notice the signs in time seals his and everyone else’s fate. So, by the end of the night, the characters’ fight for survival starts blurring the line between victim and monster. 

The table contains basic details on Primate:

What Happens After Ben Goes Feral in Primate?

After Ben goes feral in Primate, the film fully embraces chaos and doesn’t slow down. Once the rabies infection takes hold, Ben is no longer the gentle, intelligent chimp the family once knew. He becomes violent, unpredictable, and terrifyingly focused. In fact, he even starts stalking the characters in the mansion like a serial killer. 

So now, trapped inside an isolated cliffside home, the group has nowhere to run and no way to get help in time. In the end, out of nine major human characters, only three get to live. But the whole brutal killings start early in the film, with the cold opening establishing what Ben is capable of, as he escapes the local vet by ripping his face off. 

From there, Ben systematically starts picking people off, using the house and the surrounding land to his advantage. But what makes things more unsettling is that, despite being infected with rage, Ben appears smarter than before. He starts stalking, waiting, and planning to kill, making him feel less like a sick animal and more like a calculating predator. 

This leads Erin, the elder sister, to become the first major character to suffer an attack from Ben. He bites her, marking the beginning of the violence, though she initially manages to survive the encounter. After Erin is injured, Lucy, Hannah, Katie, and Nick manage to escape temporarily by taking shelter in the swimming pool.

Ben is unable to swim, which gives them a brief advantage. However, he continues to circle the pool from the outside, refusing to leave them alone.

How Stephen King’s Cujo Inspired the Director? 

Meanwhile, director Johannes Roberts has openly shared that Primate would not exist without Stephen King’s Cujo. The 1981 novel, and its 1983 film adaptation, follow a mother and child trapped by a rabid Saint Bernard. That simple but terrifying idea stayed with Roberts for years and eventually became the foundation for his own horror film.

Speaking with Polygon, Roberts claimed to be a longtime Stephen King fan, and said Cujo influenced how he wanted to show fear in a very limited space. But then, while Cujo used a dog, Roberts deliberately chose a chimpanzee as the threat. He explained that people naturally feel sympathy for dogs, even when they turn violent. Chimpanzees, on the other hand, feel more unsettling on screen.

I’m a massive, massive Stephen King fan, and a massive fan of Cujo… It just seemed like a really, really unpleasant idea. 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 sh*ts.

Additionally, he also reflected on the terrifying pool scene where the characters jump into a pool to keep Ben at bay. Roberts mentioned that one specific memory helped shape that scene in Primate. He recalled watching his mother’s pet dog walk in circles around their swimming pool, which directly inspired the pool sequence in the film. 

Which Characters Live And Who End Up Dying?

Okay, so as we mentioned, Johannes Roberts’ Primate turns pretty grisly when it comes to death scenes. The movie doesn’t hold back when it comes to killing off its characters, and by the time the credits roll, only a few are left alive. 

After Erin gets attacked by Ben, the teenagers Lucy, Hannah, Katie, and Nick manage to stay alive for a short time by hiding in the swimming pool. However, their brief sense of safety soon starts feeling claustrophobic, even in the open, when Ben starts stalking them from the edge, waiting for the right moment to strike.

And guess what? He gets that opportunity, and Nick’s death comes first among the group. Anticipating that he can end the threat, Nick tries to shove Ben off the cliff. Instead, Ben overpowers him and drags him over the edge, killing him instantly. So now, the tension only increases from there. 

Soon, Lucy and Katie attempt to reach a phone for help, but Ben catches up to Katie. He brutally kills her by smashing her with a rock. On the other hand, Hannah nearly escapes, but her luck runs out when she gets into the wrong car, with Drew and Brad, two men who had earlier tried to approach the group.

So, as Ben reaches the spot, he kills all three of them, leaving behind Lucy, Erin, and their father, Adam, to survive at the remote Hawaiian home. Though badly injured, they work together to finally stop Ben and escape the rampage. 

What Happens to Ben in the Stephen King-Inspired Ending? 

Now, since the movie is heavily inspired by Stephen King’s Cujo, we can all assume what may have happened to Ben at the end. Much like the ending of King’s story, where the rampage ends with Cujo’s death, even Primate ends with Ben’s demise. And it becomes possible after Lucy, Erin, and Adam manage to weaken Ben through repeated injuries during the film’s closing moments. 

Thereafter, during his last attack, as Ben is heavily injured, his struggling steps led him to be impaled on a broken chair near the swimming pool. This scene is somewhat similar to the 1983 movie, where Donna beats Cujo with a bat, and the dog later impales himself on the broken handle but isn’t killed, leading Donna to finally shoot the dog. 

So it seems that Johannes Roberts slightly changed the ending scene, allowing the rampage to end right after Ben is impaled on a broken chair, instead of leading the characters to struggle further and shoot the chimp. Well, it seems Ben’s fate was sealed from the very beginning, given how the filmmaker was heavily inspired by King. 

Let us know your opinions on Primate and the Stephen King-inspired ending. 

Primate is currently running in US theaters. 

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