Primitive War, 2025.
Directed by Luke Sparke.
Starring Ryan Kwanten, Jeremy Piven, Tricia Helfer, Nick Wechsler, Anthony Ingruber, Aaron Glenane, Carlos Sanson Jr, Ana Thu Nguyen, Albert Mwangi, Adolphus Waylee, Henry Nixon, Lincoln Lewis, Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, Marcus Johnson and Jake Ryan.
SYNOPSIS:
Vietnam. 1968. A recon unit known as Vulture Squad is sent to an isolated jungle valley to uncover the fate of a missing Green Beret platoon. They soon discover they are not alone.
Ever since audiences were gripped by the scale and impressive effects of Jurassic Park, successive dinosaur movies have struggled to be taken seriously – and often for good reason. Much like the numerous Jurassic sequels, then the wave of trashy “Giant xxx vs xxx” creature-features, it wasn’t long before the very idea of making a dinosaur film more or less earmarked it for the free-to-stream backwaters: the modern-day equivalent of the video-rental bargain bin.
Some have overcome this stigma, and Primitive War is the kind of pulp-novel visual that promises the film you’re about to watch knows exactly what it is: a gonzo war picture where the horrors of ’68 collide with the hungers of the Late Cretaceous. This film takes that promise and sprints with it, sometimes stumbling, often surprising, and largely delivering a muscular creature feature with a surprisingly human core.
Set in 1968, Luke Sparke’s film drops us straight into the fallout of one mission as Vulture Squad, a tight and well-seasoned recon team led by Ryan Kwanten’s Baker, expects a rare breather. Instead, they’re packed off on a classified recovery job involving a vanished Green Beret unit.
Within minutes of entering the jungle, the squad realise this isn’t just another slog through enemy territory. The treeline is scarred by something colossal. Corpses are mutilated in ways no VC unit could manage. And the night carries a shrill, guttural cry that doesn’t belong in any war movie.
When the dinosaurs show themselves, Sparke resists the temptation to treat the moment as a punchline. The first attack is shot with a kind of grim conviction, grounding the absurdity in sheer panic. From there, the film reveals its triptych shape: a Vietnam thriller; a survival adventure; and an eventual dive into the Cold War science-fiction explaining how these animals crossed 65 million years to arrive in a live-fire zone.
What’s surprising is how often the film takes its characters seriously. The squad isn’t a gallery of identical grunts waiting to be thinned out. There are men carrying guilt, men barely holding the line on their own trauma, men muttering through addiction fog. Kwanten anchors this, giving Baker the exhausted, quietly wounded air of a soldier who knows he’s already used up every ounce of luck afforded to him. Tricia Helfer provides a flinty counterpoint as Sofia, a scientist scrambling to survive the fallout of an experiment that should never have left the drawing board. Even when some of the accents wobble, the performances give the carnage enough dramatic ballast to matter.
And yes, there’s carnage. Limbs are lost, torsos vanish into jaws, and firefights become meat grinders the moment a raptor darts between the trees. Sparke’s approach to effects is canny: shoot practical where possible, lean on CG when needed, and let low light mask the joins. While the creatures aren’t flawless, they’re consistently convincing enough to maintain the illusion, particularly in the surprisingly tense daylight sequences where nothing can hide behind shadow. This isn’t a B-movie smirkfest, it aims higher, and more often than not, it gets there.
Tonally, the film dances between earnest war drama and unabashed pulp, and that tension is part of its charm. While one moment evokes Apocalypse Now, complete with a languid river drift and a 60s needle drop that borders on dreamy. Seconds later, a pack of feathered predators tears into formation as if playing by the rules of a bloody video game. Somehow, the mixture works. Sparke isn’t aiming for satire; he’s aiming for spectacle with weight, and the commitment shows.
At over two hours, the film moves quickly, even when switching gears into its explanatory final act. The ‘Collider’ plotline, with its Cold War paranoia and scientific overreach, won’t win awards for subtlety, but it ties the chaos together and gives the climax a sense of shape rather than final-reel flailing.
Primitive War is, improbably, the most entertaining dinosaur film in years. It’s chaotic, heartfelt, brutal and oddly sincere. It knows its audience. It knows its influences. And it is an action movie with enough bite to make a Tyrannosaurus proud.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Tom Atkinson
