TL;DR: Primitive War is a joyously trashy, Vietnam-set dino bloodbath filled with Creedence tracks, plasticky monsters, and buckets of gore. It’s repetitive but never boring — a beer-and-popcorn fever dream that embraces its B-movie DNA with hilarious commitment.
Primitive War
Primitive War feels like someone dared a film crew to combine Apocalypse Now with a Syfy Channel dinosaur marathon and somehow everyone said yes. The result is a proudly unhinged, blood-splattered Vietnam pulp throwback that doesn’t pretend to be prestige cinema for even a second — and honestly, that’s part of its charm. This is the kind of movie that smells like napalm, sweat, and melting plastic dinosaur skins, all blasted through cheap speakers while Creedence Clearwater Revival reminds you every five minutes that, yes, we are indeed in “Vietnam.”
Even though it was shot in Australia, surrounded by eucalyptus trees trying very hard to look like Southeast Asia, the film commits so fully to the late-1960s war-movie aesthetic that your brain just rolls with it. The production drops Creedence tracks with the subtlety of a thrown grenade — Run Through the Jungle, Fortunate Son, the whole Greatest Hits set — and it works in that big goofy way where needle drops become part of the punchline.
The story kicks off when a squad of Green Berets goes missing deep in the jungle, prompting Colonel Jericho — played by Jeremy Piven, who delivers every line like he’s auditioning for a Sergeant Slaughter biopic — to deploy the elite Vulture Squad. Piven’s performance is so knowingly hammy you can practically see the glaze. He’s the movie’s spirit animal: loud, ridiculous, and absolutely having the time of his life.
Our boots-on-the-ground lead is Sgt Ryan Baker, played by Ryan Kwanten with a weathered thousand-yard stare and the vibe of a man who’s had it up to here with the jungle, the war, and probably his own squad. The Vulture Squad itself is the classic war-movie bingo card of soldier archetypes — the smart one, the loud one, the rookie, the guy who jokes too much, the guy who probably shouldn’t be trusted with ammo — and together they stumble into a problem no amount of standard military training could prepare them for: dinosaurs.
Actual dinosaurs.
The movie wastes no time making that clear, either. Early encounters are a blur of shaking leaves, screams, and the sort of practical gore that makes you whisper “Oh wow, someone had fun in the prosthetics department.” The dinos themselves look… let’s call it “variable.” In the shadows, they’re fine. Menacing, even. But in broad daylight, some of them resemble animatronics retired from a theme park clearance sale. Still, when the carnage starts, it’s clear the filmmakers know exactly what their audience is here for. The innards and blood sprays are significantly more convincing than the creatures delivering them, suggesting the budget had priorities.
One thing the movie never apologizes for is its tone. Primitive War is gleeful. Cheerfully violent. Repetitive, sure — the structure is essentially “walk, banter, gunfire, screaming, dinosaur attack, repeat” — but never dull. It moves with the energy of a pulpy comic book where every page ends with something roaring. And the more serious geopolitical side plot (involving Soviets, shadowy scientists, and covert experiments gone wrong) mostly exists so the movie can yell “SCIENCE DID IT!” and sprint back toward the nearest raptor.
There’s something weirdly nostalgic about the whole package. It reminded me of those off-brand dinosaur novels I used to grab from bargain bins as a kid, the ones with covers featuring soldiers firing M16s at a T-Rex drawn by someone who’d never seen a real gun or dinosaur. Primitive War is that experience brought to life — cheesy, sincere, and going way harder than its budget should allow.
Does it get repetitive? Absolutely. Does it matter? Not really. Because Primitive War is the rare B-movie that knows exactly what it is and hits that target with unashamed enthusiasm. You don’t watch it for groundbreaking narrative depth. You watch it for a raptor knock a guy off his feet while CCR blares like the film is legally required to remind you of the era every eight minutes.
Primitive War won’t convert anyone who isn’t already on board with soldier-vs-dinosaur chaos. But if that premise makes your inner 13-year-old fist-pump, then this movie understands you. It was made for you. And it knows exactly the kind of fun you’re here to have.
