Primitive War lurches to life as if someone siphoned the lunacy from Platoon, spliced it with the animal anarchism of Jurassic Park, set the blender to “puree,” and handed the results not to Spielberg and Oliver Stone, but an upstart Aussie with a larcenous joy in genre. If you stroll into Luke Sparke’s dino-in-the-jungle opus expecting a childish rerun or Syfy-channel barrel-scraping, prepare for a rude, exuberant awakening. This is a film that knows exactly how daft its premise sounds but, by some ferocious, inexplicable alchemy, ends up giving the last three Jurassic World movies a savage trouncing.
It should be a disaster. The synopsis is almost pugnaciously idiotic – Marines staggering through the Already-Lost War, muttering about “bad vibes,” only to find themselves harried not by Charlie-in-the-trees, but by packs of feathered raptors and hissing tyrannosaurs. What’s remarkable is how little you’re inclined to care. Within minutes, Sparke—somewhere between a true-believer and a gleeful prankster—hauls you across the border from disbelief to sport, and the movie just keeps winning you over.
Credit where it’s due: for a film made on a shoestring and a prayer, the dinosaur effects are, often, joyously good. Not merely passable, but, in stretches, legitimately thrilling—behemoths that chew through Soviet commandos and Marine psyches alike with feverish, impossible menace. These are not the dainty animatronics of Spielberg nostalgia, nor the glazed-over, digital slabs from the fallen Jurassic World empire. No—Sparke’s beasts snarl, hunt, sleep, graze, and, occasionally, slither into the sort of hyper-violent demon mode that would send most summer blockbusters scurrying for their parental ratings board.
The carnage is immediate and unsparing. It’s the rare dinosaur movie that remembers, between the screeching lizards and particle colliders, that these animals were predators—feral, hungry, and, in Sparke’s lovingly depicted vision, closer to nature’s judge and executioner than childhood fantasy. The gore doesn’t just splash; it sloshes, reminding the audience that “fight for survival” here is a promise, not a marketing tease.
If the effects are a kick in the shins to industrial bloat, the script is something else—a Vietnam movie riff with glints of real struggle and at least a smattering of mental health. Our platoon, led by Ryan Kwanten’s Sergeant Baker, actually registers as a scrappy fraternity of grunts, staggeringly alive (if occasionally questionable in their accents or their endless font of ammunition). The Marines are not decorators—Sparke and co-writer Ethan Pettus sneak in a little soul, a whiff of PTSD, and one or two moments where men hollowed by war react with genuine shock (and, hilariously, crude language) to finding they’re just dessert for Mrs. T-Rex.
Pacing is the indigent’s burden: the film is a hair too long, sometimes surrendering to a relentless gunfire-and-dino-attack rhythm that, for all its ingenuity, doesn’t always dodge repetition. Occasionally, you’re left in the uncanny valley between grim seriousness and banana-republic action-movie glee—but even there it’s never dull, and the sheer scale and confidence are invigorating.
And—bless the B-movie gods—there’s music. Creedence howls through the trees, Fogerty’s scorched guitar strings summoning the ghost of every pop-culture ‘Nam seen since Apocalypse Now, and out stride our Marines with the swagger of men who vaguely suspect their gigs are about to be upstaged by a Cretaceous bloodbath.
There are, naturally, flaws. If you’re allergic to bad Russian accents, don’t expect a miracle cure. The nearly endless ammo, as ever, pulls you out; maybe it’s something in the Nam air. But in this age, would you rather have Marines who spend their last bullet and die with the right accent—or a secondhand T-Rex rampaging through Soviet research stations like a fever-dream Godzilla?
But the real miracle lies in how much Primitive War accomplishes, how many cinematic tricks it pulls with four cents on the Jurassic dollar. This is the love letter of a man—a fan—who actually cares about dinosaurs, not just as IP, but as animals and monsters, random, dangerous, sublime. It’s a feral, passionate, not-quite-camp, not-quite-straightforward juggernaut, and when the raptors come feathered (finally!), it’s as if Sparke himself is thumbing his nose at the franchise kingpins and reminding us: competition is the only way forward.
To say Sparke “punches above his weight class” feels almost like an insult. There’s genuine awe here—the dirty, jerry-rigged kind of awe that blockbusters, with their millions, somehow lost. If you want a dinosaur movie that bites, that isn’t afraid to be ugly, profane, or unexpectedly moving, this is the ride. It’s wild, unkempt, fun as hell—a mad, blood-sprayed psalm to cinematic obsession. Let them come, the franchise giants. We need more of this kind of carnivorous, cutthroat joy.
By the time you stagger out, ears ringing, you may feel you’d just survived a firefight in the jungles of the id, Creedence echoing in your skull, the scent of gunpowder and wet scales in your nose. And that—for a movie that, on paper, should never have worked—feels like a small, savage victory.
