A Brief History
On August 21, 2025, Australian science fiction action horror film Primitive War was released in theaters in the United States by Fathom Entertainment. The film features fearsome dinosaurs in the 20th Century, but definitely not part of the Jurassic Park film franchise
Digging Deeper
The film finds our heroes, US Army long range recon soldiers, in the jungles of Viet Nam during the war, fighting not only the communist enemy, but murderous reptiles from millions of years ago that have unexpectedly appeared. In the interest of not providing a spoiler, we will let you find out why the demonic dinos are in Viet Nam by watching the film.
Primitive War, with its humble budget of only $7 million Canadian cannot hope to compete with the lavish effects exhibited by the Jurassic Park films (the most recent film having a generous $200 million budget). Although the film starts kind of dark and not overly sharp depicting the featured monsters, later in the movie the color, brightness and detail of the dinos improves considerably
For a fairly low budget film, Primitive War does feature some actors familiar to us, including Ryan Kwanten, Tricia Helfer and Jeremy Piven. The acting by the cast and the dinos as well is pretty decent, and the film is entertaining for fans of dinosaur and monster movies. General Sci Fi fans should also appreciate the movie as well. Of course, young or sensitive children should probably skip the film due to lots of carnage, both human and animal induced.
Running 133 minutes with plenty of action to keep you paying attention, we liked the movie and think you would probably like it, too, despite the so-so reviews and reception reported by others. Made by Australians, you might notice little hints of that origin such as the US Army “Jeeps” having the steering wheel on the “wrong side.
Primitive War joins the pantheon of dinosaur featuring films perhaps somewhere in the middle of the pack, not the best but certainly far from the worst, a film that should easily be enjoyed by the majority of dinosaur film fans. Enjoy!
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: Did you enjoy this film?
If you liked this article and would like to receive notifications of new articles, please feel welcome to follow History and Headlines on Facebook and X!
Your readership is much appreciated!
Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Pettus, Ethan. Primitive War. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017.
Sparke, Luke, director. Primitive War 4K Ultra HD. Samuel Goldwyn Films, 2025.
The featured image in this article is a poster for the film Primitive War (2025) and the copyright for it is most likely owned by either the publisher or the creator of the work depicted. It is believed that the use of scaled-down, low-resolution images of film posters
- to provide critical commentary on the film in question or of the film poster itself, not solely for illustration
- where no free equivalent is available or could be created that would adequately give the same information,
- on a website indented primarily for educational purposes hosted on servers in the United States,
qualifies as fair use under the copyright law of the United States.
