Dennis Gaviola

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Ralph Revelar Sarza

<div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1766401457811Ryan Kwanten in &#x27;Primitive War&#x27;.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/>Ryan Kwanten in &#x27;Primitive War&#x27;</div>You know those long-haul bus rides from the city to the outskirts? The ones where the air conditioning is blasting a bit too cold, and there’s a flickering screen at the front playing some low-budget, high-concept flick you’d never choose to pay for in a theater. At first, you try to ignore it. You tell yourself the movie is beneath you, that it’s just background noise for your commute. But then, somewhere between the highway stops, you find yourself leaning into the aisle. You have no choice, it’s the only thing playing, and suddenly, the sheer, unadulterated madness on screen becomes the only thing that matters.“Primitive War” is exactly that kind of cinematic hijacking. Made for roughly $7 million, it takes a “Vietnam-meets-Jurassic Park” premise and commits to it with a straight face and a surprising amount of nerve.The film follows the Vulture Squad, a group of soldiers sent into the jungle on what should be a routine search-and-destroy mission. Instead, they discover they’re operating at the bottom of a food chain dominated by feathered, hyper-alert raptors that move with unsettling precision. The movie doesn’t waste time winking at the audience or undercutting itself with irony. It wants you stuck there with them.What “Primitive War” does best is wear you down. The jungle becomes less of a setting than a constant pressure, and the violence arrives abruptly, often without the kind of buildup that would make it feel cathartic or fun. That exhaustion is intentional. When the film locks into survival mode, it achieves a kind of scrappy intensity that bigger, more polished franchise entries often sand away. That intensity isn’t sustained without issue. At 133 minutes, it is an absolute beast of a sit, bloated in the middle and occasionally dragging its tail through a swamp of “cheesy” dialogue and a Cold War sci-fi backstory that is, frankly, preposterous. The mythology is dense, oddly sincere, and largely beside the point, pulling focus from the immediate threat that gives the film its bite.The tonal shifts can be jarring. One moment, the film wrestles with the psychological toll of combat; the next, it leans into creature-feature theatrics. Ryan Kwanten and Jeremy Piven play it all so earnestly that the contrast becomes almost funny. It’s a tonal pileup, but one held together by conviction. The movie never apologizes for its excesses, and that stubbornness becomes part of its charm. “Primitive War,” which is currently streaming on Lionsgate Play, isn’t clean, elegant, or exceptionally disciplined. It’s overstuffed, occasionally ridiculous, and far more serious than its premise probably warrants. Yet it has a raw pull that’s hard to shake. It’s the kind of movie that sneaks up on you when you’re stuck watching it, and keeps you watching even when you no longer have to.By the time the bus finally stops and it’s time to step off, you find yourself lingering, half-hoping there’s one more scene left. Not because the movie earned it in any traditional sense, but because you’ve already gone this far, and you want to see how the madness ends.<div> </div>Ralph Revelar Sarza is an internationally published film critic. This review was originally published on the author’s website, “<a href="https://www.walphs.com/2025/12/movie-review-primitive-war-2025.html">WALPHS.com</a>.”

‘Primitive War’ takes a “Vietnam-meets-Jurassic Park” premise and commits to it with a straight face and a surprising amount of nerve.

‘Primitive War’ takes a “Vietnam-meets-Jurassic Park” premise and commits to it with a straight face and a surprising amount of nerve.

Movie review: ‘Primitive War’ is too long, too loud, and weirdly hard to quit

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Movie review: ‘Primitive War’ is too long, too loud, and weirdly hard to quit

Ralph Revelar Sarza

Published Dec 22, 2025 07:11 PM PHT

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Primitive War

Lionsgate Play

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