What do you get when you take Jurassic Park and mix it with Apocalypse Now? You get one of the wildest sci-fi action thrillers you’ve ever seen set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. The best part? This hidden gem is landing on a new streaming home next month.
Directed by Luke Sparke and based on the novel by Ethan Pettus, the Australian sci-fi action thriller follows a reconnaissance unit who carry out a rescue mission for a US Army Special Forces platoon, and are attacked by de-extinct dinosaurs. If that doesn’t pique your interest, then maybe the trailer below will, because it’s absolutely bonkers.
Starring the likes of Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica), Ryan Kwanten (True Blood), Jeremy Piven (Entourage), and Nick Wechsler (Revenge), Primitive War hit theaters in Australia last year before making its way to the United States for a limited release. It didn’t do much at the box office, but it did get a lot of buzz at San Diego Comic-Con, where it became the first Australian movie ever to headline a panel. For those interested in checking it out (and you really should), Primitive War will be available on its new streaming home of Hulu beginning Apr. 4.
‘Primitive War’ Delivers Exactly What It Promises
With many low-budget indie films, sometimes the sizzle outshines the steak in the sense that they fail to deliver on what they promise. For a movie like Primitive War, you’d expect the dinosaurs to be few and far between as a reason to keep costs low. As such, the best parts of the movie would be in the trailer, right? Wrong!
Speaking with SyFy Wire last October, Sparke said that’s exactly the type of thing he wanted to avoid going into Primitive War. “I hate when something is presented to you in a trailer, and you go in thinking it was one thing, but then you come out going, ‘It actually wasn’t that much about that particular thing I wanted it to be about,'” he said, adding:
“We’ve seen that a lot in Hollywood, and I’ve seen it a lot when I’ve gone to cinemas. So for me, it was always like, ‘Every five, seven minutes, let’s make sure that there’s a dinosaur doing something, because that’s what people are here to see.’ The promise of the premise is what I always said during post-production.”
Needless to say, the dinosaurs are just as prevalent as the soldiers in Primitive War, which actually holds a pretty good audience score of 86% on Rotten Tomatoes. That alone makes it worth checking out next month.
‘Primitive War 2’ Has Been Confirmed
Once you watch Primitive War, the first thing that will undoubtedly pop into your head is, “When can I see more of this?” The answer is most likely in 2027, as a sequel has been confirmed.
According to Variety, Primitive War 2 is in development, and eyeballing a release date of next year. “The first film was about discovery,” Sparke told the outlet. “This is about escalation — what happens when control is lost, when nature adapts faster than military doctrine and when the war itself becomes secondary to what’s been unleashed.”
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
