Editor’s Note: Freeline Media’s movie critic, Mike Fried, has a public service warning for the cinema-loving public. There are some new streaming films that are not about torture — but are torture! Read on.

By MIKE FRIED

It was a bad day Wednesday for new streaming releases. But … not a total loss if you like gory horror movies. 

THE HORROR FILM: PRIMATE (2026) on Paramount Plus 

***

The opening credits tell us that the first case of hydrophobia was written about in 2300 BC and that another name for hydrophobia is Rabies. 

The next thing we are treated to — which I did not have in my 2026 Bingo Card — was everyone’s nice guy actor Rob Delaney getting his face ripped off by a chimpanzee. 

Lucy Pinbrough is going home to Hawaii with her best friend Kate and a woman named Hannah that Kate invited along. Meanwhile, they meet two guys who tag along. They are visiting their deaf father, a famous novelist. They have a pet chimpanzee named Ben and dad notices that Ben has been bitten by a mongoose. He is a highly intelligent chimp that was taught by Lucy’s mother who died a year earlier. Ben has rabies, of course — and attacks Delaney again (not again as in a repeat of the first time) — and when he escapes from his enclosure, he terrorizes them.  

What doesn’t work in this movie is the acting (aside from Troy Kotsur, who isn’t in it enough). These kids can scream a lot but they really aren’t acting well. But then again — it’s a horror film. Are you watching it for the acting?

What it does well is the production overall. It is a neatly designed and produced horror film. Surprisingly Ben the Chimp is played by a human being, Miguel Torres Umba, who is a specialist in physical movement and most of the effects are done practically with chimpanzee prosthetics, combined with some animatronics. For me, this was the make or break thing in the movie. A CGI chimp would have looked like crap. 

Similarly, the filmmakers gave the humans a safe space; that is to say, staying in the infinity pool, because Ben can’t swim. By hanging on to a raft in the pool, this becomes a horror version of Lifeboat. But, of course, since this is a horror film; someone is going to have to leave the safe confines of the pool. And when that happens, director Johannes Roberts heightens the tension with a neat sequence in which two characters are trapped in a closet and must remain absolutely silent so Ben does not find them. 

But what makes this downright eerie is the fact that Lucy’s mom made a device that enables Ben to speak and when Ben uses it, man o man is it creepy. 

And using your standard horror movie tropes, you generally know who is going to live and who is going to die. It’s not rocket science. 

The horror carnage effects are particularly well done, the score is foreboding and the darkened lighting helps the filmmakers get away with more. And there’s a terrific scene where the sound design becomes a character in the film. But what aids the film the most is its short running time. There’s a lot of exposition in the film after the face ripping so that the action doesn’t really start in earnest until there’s less than an hour to go. And that tremendously helps the film’s pacing.  

I’m not going to tell you to go out and buy this movie; but if you are a horror fan and you have Paramount Plus, definitely WATCH IT! 

THE TWO HORRIFIC FILMS

PRETTY LETHAL (2026) on Prime Video

• 1/2

It’s a tale as old as time. Five ballerinas and their teacher go to Budapest for a competition and the bus they’re on breaks down in the middle of nowhere. They wind up in an old hotel where things are not as they seem, filled with a bunch of creepy old Eastern European men and a dragon lady of a former dancer.  

Originally titled Ballerina Overdrive, this 87North Production was retitled because of, ahem, some other ballerina film called Ballerina. 

I guess somebody heard someone else say that the fight scenes in John Wick were well choreographed and almost balletic, and some schmuck decided that this was the springboard of an idea.  When the best line of the movie is “they’re a bunch of old guys and we’re prima fucking ballerinas,” you know that this is a one-note action horror thriller that wasn’t thought out properly.  

In fact, I can’t remember the last time a movie that was 81 minutes without the credits had such serious pacing issues.  The humor is forced and doesn’t land well. The acting is poor — you can tell Uma Thurman is doing this for the paycheck (and has it come to that already, Uma?)  Playing a character that can best be described as Natasha Fatale without Boris Badenov, she is terrible.  The only one who seemed to have any skill in delivering a decent performance is Millicent Simmonds, who as the deaf sister of one of the other ballerinas just wants to get a tattoo from “that cute guy.” 

I am at a loss to even understand who this movie was targeted to. Even the movie’s big set piece, where the bad guys get their asses kicked by the ballerinas to Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Hours, is good; but there should have even more of that. A three minute sequence does not a movie make. 

And even though the movie ends with a whimper, it should have ended with a bang. 

AVOID!

ANACONDA (2025) on Netflix

• 1/2

I really have no idea why I am watching this movie again.  I think it was because I watched Amazon Prime’s Pretty Lethal and I need to see which one is really worse. Pretty Lethal was worse 

From my prior review: 

I can’t stand Jack Black. I have hated every movie he has been in — except the Jackal where he gets blowed up — and even teaming with Paul Rudd is suspect. But here I am. 

Four childhood friends decide to remake their favorite 1990s horror movie in the Amazon rainforest when they happen up on an anaconda of their very own. 

Jack Black is a unsatisfied wedding videographer. Paul Rudd is Griff, a wannabe actor who gets fired on his first day on a soap opera. Steve Zahn plays Kenny, their friend with an addiction problem and, surprisingly, Thandiwe Newton plays the fourth one in the group, Claire, who puts up most of the money. 

Tom Gormican, who wrote and directed this film, previously succeeded with the Meta-film The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, but this one misses the mark. In order for a meta-film to work, it needs to be equal to or better than the original — this is so far from good that it makes 1997 original look like a Best Picture nominee.  

The only reason I didn’t walk out was because the reclining seat was completely comfortable. 

I almost gave an extra half star for what happened to Jack Black; but Gormican couldn’t even do that right.  

There was precisely one funny scene in the movie. 

This is my vote for worst film of the year. I may wish to add extra stars to The Conjuring: Last Rites, Megan 2.0, G20 and the Electric State just so that they are not in the same league as this. 

ACTIVELY AVOID THIS but avoid PRETTY LETHAL more!

Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.

Contact Mike at moviemike3@yahoo.com and mike.fried@yahoo.com.