PRIMITIVE WAR movie poster | ©2025 Sparke Films

In PRIMITIVE WAR, which opens in theatres Thursday, August 21, it’s 1968 and the Viet Nam War is at full blast. The U.S. Army’s Vulture Squad reconnaissance unit is sent in search of a missing Green Beret platoon. In an isolated jungle valley, the squad finds – living dinosaurs.

APOCALYPSE NOW, meet JURASSIC PARK (or THE VALLEY OF GWANGI, or Skull Island). Based on the novel by Ethan Pettus, PRIMITIVE WAR is directed by Luke Sparke, who wrote the screenplay with Pettus.

Tricia Helfer is one of the stars of PRIMITIVE WAR. Her character is not a member of Vulture Squad, but rather a Russian paleontologist who has been trapped in the dinosaur-ridden jungle for the past year.

Helfer, originally from Alberta, Canada, has starred in the award-winning 2004-2009 series BATTLESTAR: GALACTICA as the Cylon Number Six. Since then, Helfer has played the Supreme Goddess of all creation, plus mortal lawyer Charlotte, in the series LUCIFER and Dracula on VAN HELSING.

More human roles include series regular characters in ASCENSION, DARK BLUE, THE FIRM, KILLER WOMEN, and STEP UP: HIGH WATER.

Helfer currently resides in rural Georgia with five rescue cats (she describes herself as “a foster fail”) and two goats. She walks the walk when it comes to her love for animals. “I’m looking to move back to L.A. at the end of this year, and I will be back at more events and functions. I was working this last couple of years with the Humane Society of the U.S., which is now Humane World.

“I went to Washington to try and lobby Congress to change the legislation on cruelty [inherent in] testing on animals for cosmetics. We got it changed in Canada, but we have not gotten it changed in the States yet. More companies are actually going that way on their own, but there is not blanket legislation at this point. So, that’s still on the roster to be fought.”

Helfer gets on a Zoom call to discuss the bigger animals, and imperiled people, of PRIMITIVE WAR.

“It was a really fun mashup of genres. They definitely were taking themselves seriously with being a war film, they weren’t being cheesy with that at all. So, it’s horror, sci-fi, war, drama, and I just found it a really fun ride.”

Tricia Helfer | ©2025 Manfred Baumann

A Russian accent was something Helfer had never done before. “I got the offer [to play the role] about a week before I had to travel, and with the time change – this is an Australian film, so the producers and everybody were out of Australia, and trying to get the time zone with them, my representation in L.A., I was on the East Coast – you’re waiting to hear back.”

Concerned that there might not be enough time to do anything if she waited for confirmation she’d been cast, Helfer says, “I took the initiative anyway, when I first got the offer, of, ‘Okay, if this is actually going to happen, I need to get some dialect coaching in. And if it’s not going to happen, it’s not bad to do some dialect coaching anyway.’ So, I looked on Instagram and found a dialect coach, researched a few off their Instagram pages, and so, Instagram for the win, helping me out.

I found Sarah Valentine, and she was great. But it was a challenge, getting it done that fast. I did have a break once I got there. I filmed for one day, and then I had at least a week break.” But once the accent has been established on film, “even if you can get it better, you have to stay the same throughout the film. So, I had to go with what I started with. We’ll see how it turns out,” Helfer laughs.

Asked if there were elements of the accent she found particularly difficult or easy, Helfer replies, “What’s tricky about many accents, I guess, but particularly Russian, is it can sound caricaturish very fast for a non-native speaker. And so, it’s finding the balance between having it sound good, but not be over the top [with] your Vs and your Ds and your THs. I was so nervous about it.

“When I got there, when we did our table read, I was the only character doing a Russian accent. There were some others later, but they hadn’t been booked yet, and we meet them later in the film. So, that was another challenge for me, of being the only one doing the accent. If I was in scenes for the entire movie with everybody doing the accent, it would have been easier.

“At one point, we were doing some action, it was toward the end of the film, and there were some ad-libbed lines. I said, ‘Really?’, but I said it very much American. And I remember going back into Video Village, and I was like, ‘You can’t use that take. I sounded completely American in that.’ So, it was a challenge, but I think I pulled it off.”

Pronunciation was also a big part of the research Helfer did into the scientist side of her character.

“I remember actually working with Sarah on some of the dinosaur names I didn’t even know. I’ve never really studied dinosaurs too much. You know the T-rex, you know a few others, but there were one or two names that we didn’t even know how to pronounce them, and so of course, you’re having to look up, and then add the Russian accent on top of it.

 But again, it is an action film at the end of the day. The role is not necessarily about me being a paleontologist. So, as long as I knew what I was talking about in the scenes – it’s not like I did a deep dive into the entire aspect of being a paleontologist. That wasn’t necessary for the filming of this.”

While PRIMITIVE WAR is set in 1968, most of the audience is unlikely to be very familiar with what Soviet citizens were like during that era. Did the period factor into Helfer’s performance at all?

“I did some research on that, too. It’s not like now, where there’s globalization, and a melding of different countries. I looked into the accent, and how much global interaction I would have as a scientist in Russia. But really, I was more concerned, a little bit more, on the costumes and the sets and things like that, because that’s really, again, we’re not really delving into the science of it.

“My character’s out in the jungle, so it’s not like I’m in Russia, amongst my peers, studying in a lab. My character has gone through some major trauma and has basically been out in the jungle by herself for a year, just trying to survive. So, I was more concerned about the costumes and the sets and things like that, because that sets the visual tone. And I was really highly – and you can play within that. And if that doesn’t work, then any other subtleness that I could bring to it, you’re not even going to really notice it if that’s off. And I was so pleased when I got down there to see their honesty and dedication and focus on the period and the costumes, the military costumes. I don’t have a military costume, obviously – I’m not in the military in the movie – but it is time- and period-appropriate, and they put a lot of energy into making that look good, and I think it shows on screen.

Most of Helfer’s PRIMITIVE WAR costars are Australian. She knew some by reputation, and others she learned about while working with them. “I knew Nick Wechsler – we share the same manager and I had met him a few times, he’s a very good friend of a friend of mine, and so I was excited to work with him. Ryan Kwanten, I was excited to work with him. I had never met him before.

“And the rest of the Australian actors were just fantastic. I didn’t know any of them prior, so going into this, we became a team and got along great. It was a wonderful filming experience. Everybody was really in it.”

Jeremy Piven is the other North American actor in PRIMITIVE WAR. While Helfer is reluctant to spoil much, it sounds as though she doesn’t have scenes with him. “Jeremy Piven was only in for a couple days in the very beginning. He [plays] the commander, sending the Vulture Squad out on this mission.”

Most of the film, Helfer continues, “was Nick, Ryan, myself, and a bunch of guys that I was meeting for the first time. And they were just so lovely, talented, hard workers, and we really had fun filming out in the elements, in the jungles of the Gold Coast, Australia. Everybody put their best in. And we’re still all close, we’re still on the phone, WhatsApp chain, checking on birthdays and just to say hello, a supportive, wonderful group.”

Were there any practical dinosaurs on set for the actors to interact with, or are they all CGI?

“We had [practical dinosaurs] for a couple of days, at the very end of production. Ninety-five percent of the film is shot on location. I’m so thankful that they decided to do this, instead of on a green screen and the whole thing in a studio, and you’re imagining the dinosaurs, you’re imagining the world, you’re imagining everything.

“We were out in the jungle, we were trudging through the mud, we were jumping in the rivers. Nowadays, there’s so much with green screen, it’s really hard. I’m doing a performance-capture videogame right now, and it’s one of the hardest jobs I’ve done, because you have to imagine literally everything, from what you’re carrying as a prop to the world. And I find that it’s a big challenge.”

In contrast, for PRIMITIVE WAR, “The only thing we had to imagine was the dinosaurs. But we did have a practical, for the last week of filming in studio, so it was great. I didn’t really have too much interaction with it, because it was more used to go through corridors and put its head through some doors and that type of thing.

“Out in the jungle, it was the AD with the pool skimmer for our eyeline for the T-rex.” Helfer holds her hand above her head to emulate someone holding a pole.

To make the environment look as though dinosaurs were trampling through it, “The location guys rigged up trees, so that the branches would rustle, and the grass would all flatten, so the locations and the crew did a lot to do as much practical effects as we could out in the jungle.”

There were also encounters with enormous real-world Australian wildlife during the shoot.

Helfer recalls with a laugh, “I didn’t see it, but at one point, Ryan and Carlos [Sanson Jr.] were like, ‘We’re just going to walk to the location from base camp.’ They had to cross this small road with this massive snake across it, and Carlos was like, ‘Nope. I’m turning around, I’m going in the van, I’m not going to be trying to step over this massive snake.’ Ryan was laughing, because he wasn’t as fazed by it, but Carlos was a little fazed.”

Then there was Helfer’s own experience. “All of us were doing this scene, and we’re being attacked, and so there’s lots of action, and there’s lots of shooting, and it’s smoky and foggy. At one point, Nick and I both fall back against this embankment. When they yelled, ‘Cut!’, Nick and I both turned around to push ourselves up, and there’s a massive spider the size of my palm,” Helfer moves one hand around her opposite palm to indicate the arachnid’s circumference, “right by our heads. So, that kind of stuff happened quite often.”

Helfer is still involved in acting in the motion-capture videogame and has recently signed onto a new cable TV series, but she’s not allowed to discuss those projects yet.

What would Helfer most like people to know about PRIMITIVE WAR?

“See it in the theatre if you can –it’s the type of movie you want to go to the theatres and see. I was really amazed with when I saw a cut of the film – I still haven’t seen the final finished version. I thought the dinosaurs are going to be few and far between, because they’re expensive to make and they’re hard to make. But the production has just gone all-out.

“Director Luke Sparke, this is his childhood [dream]. He was like, ‘I want to make a film that I want to watch.’ He’s a huge fan of that genre, and he’s just poured his heart and soul into it, and if you’re a dinosaur fan, they are all over the movie. They do not limit the amount. So, if you want a fun, thrilling, old-school action ride, with a lot of heart, go check it out.”

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