Actor Nick Wechsler says all of his friends keep asking, “‘When is your dinosaur Vietnam movie coming out?'” The movie he’s referring to is Primitive War, an indie horror movie from filmmaker Luke Sparke that will be available in theaters beginning August 21st.
And yes, the premise really is that it’s a dinosaur Vietnam movie. Based on the novel of the same name by Ethan Pettus, Primitive War takes place in 1968 Vietnam, when a recon unit is sent to an isolated jungle valley to search for a missing Green Beret platoon. In that jungle, they’re faced with something they couldn’t have possibly expected: dinosaurs.
I recently spoke with Wechsler about what it was like filming Primitive War, what we can expect from his character, and one of his favorite gory details from the movie. (You can watch the full interview below.)
“I loved working with everybody on it,” Wechsler began. “This was one of the best experiences I’d ever had.”
Wechsler said it was a “quick turnaround” after getting the offer to be in Primitive War, and he had to decide quickly. Days later, he was filming on the Gold Coast of Australia.
Because his character, Eli, is said to be from the south (he’s described in the novel as “a Kentuckian”), Wechsler was nervous about perfecting the right accent in such a short amount of time. However, he said Sparke put his “mind at ease right away,” and they decided to abandon doing the southern accent because of the time constraints.
“It would have been fun to try to do an accent, but I just didn’t want to do it distractingly badly,” Wechsler said.
“He’s still technically from there because it’s in the lines. I still say things like, something about the Smoky Mountains,” he added. “And he still says certain phrasings that are a bit like someone from that area.”
Working with Sparke also meant having a certain amount of freedom in developing the character, which is another reason Wechsler enjoyed working on the film.
“I found Luke to be very… just good at what he was doing, but also just humble and nice,” Wechsler said. “I just loved working with him. And he gave all of us a lot of freedom.”
“So I got to kind of come up with what the character was, rather than try to fit a description.”
“Some of the things that I was written to say, I was like, ‘Oh, this is kind of dickish thing to say, or a mood-killing thing to say right now.’ That’s funny to me.”
There were also a few moments in the script that led Wechsler to imagine the character to be an atheist who had been raised by religious parents.
“His name is Eli. That’s a biblical name,” he said. “So, if you got a biblical name, then you probably had parents who were believers. If you’re an atheist now, what was the moment of disillusionment, you know?”
“And also, just where did this caustic personality come from, where he’s always being kind of an asshole?”
At the same time, Eli is fiercely loyal to his squad. “They’re the people he trusts. It’s like, ‘I believe in the tangible this that we have — this friendship, this camaraderie,'” Wechsler said. “‘I feel like I don’t have faith; I have them. And I have trust in and love for them, and I’ll have their back at all costs.'”
Wechsler also noted that despite the dinosaur element, Luke Sparke “made the fun choice to ground it and make the military stuff authentic.” That meant there was military training involved with technical advisor Freddie Jo Farnsworth, and plenty of opportunities to work closely with castmates.
“We just really bonded,” he said. “I loved the group of actors. I just loved everybody.”
Speaking of the dinosaurs, Wechsler said he was glad the characters weren’t kept “too dumb for too long.”
“Basically, pretty quickly, everybody starts calling them dinosaurs,” he laughed. “They do think, ‘Is that some kind of weird f*cking bird, or is that some kind of weird… whatever?’ Like at first. But then, pretty quickly, we’re like, ‘I think these are f*cking dinosaurs.'”
“I don’t know if mystery’s the right term, but I do think at a certain point, we’re like, ‘Okay, so these are dinosaurs. What the f*ck?!'”
He said there is “a fun explanation” that, to him, feels like it could be an analogy for something like the atomic bomb.
“Whether Ethan [Pettus] intended it that way or not, I don’t know, but that’s how I read it when I read the script.”
The tagline for Primitive War, as seen in the trailer and movie poster, is “This ain’t no walk in the park.” Obviously, this means audiences should expect something different than something like Jurassic Park.
“I could be wrong, but I think Luke came up with that,” Wechsler said. “I think he’s being tongue-in-cheek about, like, this is a different version of dinosaur sh*t. Like, you haven’t seen a slasher, R-rated, kind of indie horror take on dinosaurs.”
Along those lines, Wechsler shared one gory detail from the film that he particularly loved.
“When someone is being eaten alive, and they’re shrieking, one of the dinosaurs puts its claw over his mouth to silence him while it eats him,” he said. “So, just a small detail, but I just loved it. It gave me a little chill when I watched it.”
While Wechsler thinks the film’s concept alone makes Primitive War worth seeing, he also shared a few more reasons for viewers to check it out in theaters.
“All of my friends are like, ‘When is your dinosaur Vietnam movie coming out?’ So I feel like the concept is such a hook, I don’t even need to put much more bait on there,” Wechsler said.
“But then there’s great performances, the effects are really good, there’s personality, there’s some humor. It’s shot beautifully. But also, it’s f*cking bloody.”
“Also, go support some indie filmmakers,” he added. “It was so ambitious to make an effects-heavy indie.”
“I want him to get to make more. I want people to get to make more like this.”
Watch the full interview with Nick Wechsler:
Primitive War will be available in theaters beginning August 21st.
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Ashley Bissette Sumerel
Ashley Bissette Sumerel is a television and film critic living in Wilmington, North Carolina. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Eulalie Magazine and Tell-Tale TV. She has also written for outlets such as Rolling Stone, Paste Magazine, and Insider. Ashley has been a member of the Critics Choice Association since 2017 and is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic. In addition to her work as an editor and critic, Ashley teaches courses in Writing and Literature at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she is a Senior Lecturer. You can contact Ashley at [email protected].