The tagline “Full Metal Jacket meets Jurassic Park” isn’t just marketing hyperbole—it’s the mission statement of Primitive War, the ambitious Australian production that made history as the first indie film to headline a San Diego Comic-Con panel. Director Luke Sparke, adapting Ethan Pettus’s 2017 novel, embraces this eyebrow-raising mashup with blood-soaked enthusiasm, delivering a movie that honors the grit of Vietnam War cinema while embracing the chaos of creature features.

The premise is as audacious as it sounds. It’s 1968, and Sergeant Ryan Baker (Ryan Kwanten, 2067) leads Vulture Squad, a motley recon unit sent to investigate the disappearance of a Green Beret platoon in a remote jungle valley. General Amadeus Jericho (Jeremy Piven, Edge of Tomorrow) dispatches the team under orders to recover “intelligence”. Instead, they stumble upon a Soviet particle collider gone wrong and a landscape crawling with prehistoric predators. Imagine trudging through mud, muck, and napalm only to find a Tyrannosaurus rex guarding the riverbank, and you’ll get the idea.

The film stumbles out of the gate, overloading its first act with exposition, character histories, and a few too many war-movie clichés—yes, “Fortunate Son” makes an appearance as helicopters hover above. Each soldier is made of strong character stock from countless Vietnam flicks (Politely Southern, Rootin’ Tootin’ Ladies Man, Grim Addict, Muscle Bound All Business, etc.), but once the squad is dropped into the valley to begin their mission and the dinosaurs show up, Primitive War hits its stride.

Kwanten is a steady and stoic anchor, portraying Baker as a haunted leader who has lost more men than he’d like to admit but refuses to break in front of his unit. The supporting ensemble gives the film its heart: Nick Wechsler as the alcoholic Eli, Albert Mwangi as the grounded Miller, and Carlos Sanson Jr. as the earnest medic Leon all create believable bonds. In lesser films, some of these actors might blend into the jungle backdrop, but the script gives them all moments to stand out.  Their camaraderie adds weight to the inevitable losses, which arrive with the cruelty of both war and nature.

Tricia Helfer (Spin Me Round) is a welcome presence as a Russian scientist with answers the squad doesn’t want to hear; her outsider status shifts the group’s dynamic and cuts through the testosterone-heavy energy. On the flip side, despite having unquestionably the best character name (Amadeus Jericho) since Brad Pitt’s Aldo Raine in Inglourious Basterds, Piven delivers one of the weaker turns. His accent drifts, and his bluster often overwhelms scenes that might have benefited from restraint. Still, even when the acting wobbles, the movie’s conviction rarely does.

The dinosaurs are where Sparke and his team shine. These aren’t sanitized, PG-13 attractions—Sparke leans into their primal horror. Raptors stalk through the undergrowth with unnerving patience, a Quetzalcoatlus feeding frenzy provides one of the film’s most shocking images, and a subplot involving a T. rex family adds an unexpectedly poignant thread. Best of all is Cyclops, a scarred Utahraptor and recurring nightmare for the squad who develops a personal vendetta against Ryan that elevates their final confrontation beyond simple survival horror.  It’s a genuine monster-movie villain with its own grim arc. The effects blend CGI with practical models, often surpassing recent big-budget dinosaur spectacles through sheer imagination. 

Wade Muller’s cinematography effectively utilizes Queensland’s jungle terrain, conjuring a suffocating atmosphere where every rustle in the trees signals impending danger. Night battles are lit with clarity, never hiding behind murky shadows. Tracey Rose Sparke’s costumes do their part, though the production sometimes feels too modern to fully sell its Vietnam-era setting. What does land, however, is the unrelenting brutality: Sparke doesn’t shy from showing characters suffer, and deaths linger long enough to sting. If you took a bathroom break during one grisly beheading by dino, don’t worry, there’s another one coming in a few minutes.

If Primitive War falters, it’s in pacing. At 135 minutes, the film feels twenty minutes too long, sagging when characters pause for extended backstories in between bouts of carnage. Sparke’s decision to edit his own film may have been a misstep; a tighter cut could have elevated the momentum without sacrificing any of the critical character depth he has taken the time to graft into the script. Some subplots, particularly those involving the Vietnamese villagers and their interactions with the Russians, along with threads surrounding the psychological toll of war and addiction, hint at larger themes but fade before they fully land.

Still, these minor flaws pale in comparison to what Sparke accomplishes. This is first and foremost an exploitation-style mashup, and it knows its audience. Where Jurassic World: Rebirth left many cold earlier this year with its cautious PG-13 approach, Primitive War swings the pendulum in the opposite direction: bloody, brutal, and unapologetically pulpy. It’s precisely the kind of cult-ready project Roger Corman might have dreamed up in the ’90s, and fans of Corman’s Carnosaur series will get déjà vu, only this time the effects are leagues better and the storytelling more disciplined. By treating the dinosaurs as both animals and antagonists, Sparke crafts a war film where the jungle itself fights back, and the result is as grisly as it is entertaining.

Primitive War is far from polished, but polish isn’t the point. This is a pulpy genre cocktail created as a legitimate alternative to Steven Spielberg’s family-friendly franchise, one that scratches the itch for anyone who once doodled soldiers fighting dinosaurs in a notebook and wished Hollywood would take it seriously. Sparke has, and while the seams show, the commitment is undeniable. Released as a limited Fathom Event, it may prove difficult to catch theatrically, but it demands big-screen viewing. Despite its rough edges and indulgent runtime, Primitive War delivers the sustained prehistoric action that mainstream dinosaur films have forgotten how to provide.  In this jungle, napalm isn’t the scariest thing falling from the sky.

Check out Primitive War‘s website for more info and ticketing!