Soldiers Face Jurassic Nightmare in Explosive ‘Primitive War’

Signature Entertainment has released a tense new clip titled It’s Asleep from Primitive War, the creature-driven Vietnam War thriller that storms into UK and Irish cinemas today. Adapted from Ethan Pettus’s 2017 novel and brought to the screen by Australian filmmaker Luke Sparke, the film blends military survival drama with prehistoric terror, pitching a recon unit against predators millions of years out of time.

Set in 1968, Primitive War centres on Vulture Squad, a search-and-rescue team dispatched into an isolated jungle valley to uncover what happened to a missing Green Beret platoon. The valley soon reveals itself as a lethal ecosystem where dinosaurs have inexplicably returned, turning a standard military operation into a desperate struggle against creatures none of the soldiers are prepared to face. With casualties mounting, the squad is forced to abandon standard procedure and confront the possibility that their only path to survival lies in embracing the brutality of the environment around them.

Ryan Kwanten leads the cast as Baker, marking another rugged turn for the True Blood actor, while Jeremy Piven appears as Jericho following recent runs in Mr. Selfridge, The Walk and a growing stand-up career. Tricia Helfer, widely recognised for Battlestar Galactica, plays Sophia, and Nick Wechsler, known for Revenge and The Boys, appears as Eli. The film’s supporting cast draws from Australia, the US and beyond, including Carlos Sanson Jr, Ana Thu Nguyen, Adolphus Waylee, Anthony Ingruber, Marcus Johnson and Jake Ryan.

Sparke, whose earlier films Occupation: Rainfall and Scurry pushed ambitious genre storytelling into the independent sphere, directs from his own screenplay and delivers extensive practical work alongside visual effects completed through his in-house team. Shot in Australia without studio or government backing, the project was developed as a large-scale creature feature designed to look and feel more expansive than its modest production footprint might suggest.

The filmmaker has spoken previously about wanting the film to capture the heat, chaos and immediacy of boots-on-the-ground combat, using Vietnam’s familiar cinematic backdrop as the springboard for an escalation into horror. That approach is reflected in the newly released clip, which finds members of Vulture Squad navigating a darkened jungle clearing where one of the prehistoric threats lies dormant – or at least appears to.

Primitive War arrives as interest in hybridised action-horror remains strong, particularly those that lean into a pulpy concept executed with conviction. With its collision of wartime tension and creature-driven spectacle, Sparke’s adaptation offers a riff on the classic men-on-a-mission structure while introducing a new creative playground for his effects and world-building teams.

Distributed by Signature Entertainment, Primitive War is now screening in cinemas. If you like monster movies, check it out!

Primitive War trailer