By Dov Kornits & Erin Free
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit they deserve. In this installment: local writer, producer and director Luke Sparke, who helmed Red Billabong, the Occupation films, Bring Him To Me and Primitive War.
We’ve previously stated in this column that outside of the likes of Baz Luhrmann, the various greats of The Australian New Wave of the 1970s (Peter Weir, Gillian Armstrong, Fred Schepisi, Bruce Beresford and the like), and the arthouse darlings who have been garlanded overseas (Warwick Thornton, Jennifer Kent, The Philippou Brothers and a handful of others), pretty much any Australian filmmaker could qualify as an Unsung Auteur. But even within that very broad metric, there are still several local directors whose lack of celebration is near criminal, including the likes of Alkinos Tsilimidos and Steven Kastrissios, who have both featured in this column.
The greatest critical neglect, however, often comes with commercially minded genre filmmakers, particularly those who toil in the fields of action, sci-fi and rom-com. The likes of Unsung Auteur producer/director John V. Soto and director Richard Gray, along with other players like Steve Jaggi and Patrick Hughes, are making movies aimed at large audiences, often internationally, and they’ve carved out an admirable corner of the industry for themselves, but with little in the way of major praise.
One of the most ambitious and prolific of these filmmakers, however, is Luke Sparke, whose handful of impressive works take in the action, sci-fi, thriller, war and horror genres. All of this vital, hard-working writer/producer/director’s movies are made locally on mid-level budgets and look and feel much, much bigger than they actually are. Sparke snags big-name internationals for his casts, and gets plenty of bang for his buck, but gets little credit for his films at home, which is a crying shame.
Before making his debut in 2016 with the low budget horror flick Red Billabong, Sparke worked on various films in the costume and production departments. “I’m a huge movie lover, so being involved in so many great productions – in any capacity – has been something really special to me,” Sparke told FilmInk in 2016. “I tell anyone wanting to know how to crack into the industry: just start working on set, even in the smallest position. And if you want to learn, it’s all there in front of you for twelve-plus hours a day. My time as costume and advising really took me into the inner workings of filmmaking with some spectacular mentors to bounce ideas off – and I took out of it what I thought was the best way to tell my stories.”
Red Billabong is a fun creature feature that shows very little creature for the majority of the film, instead focusing on building the personalities and dynamics of its attractive young cast (Dan Ewing, Tim Pocock, Sophie Don, Jessica Green, Ben Chisholm, Emily Joy). When the creature finally arrives, it is found in the recognisable Australian bush and comes shrouded in Aboriginal mysticism. Shot on a low budget, and then sold to various overseas territories, the inventive and entertaining Red Billabong pretty much set the standard for Sparke’s career. “We were almost ready to move with a war film called The 34th Battalion but we had a rug pulled from under us by other factors,” the director explained to FilmInk, “so I pulled out this script and got to work rewriting it into something we could get going ourselves. I had done all the research on Aboriginal mythology and I think the whole concept is very unique, so I didn’t want it to go waste.”
After Red Billabong got noticed in the right corners, Luke Sparke went widescreen with his next two films. The Queensland-shot 2018 effort Occupation and its 2020 sequel Occupation: Rainfall expertly and with great enthusiasm and bravura filmmaking charted an alien invasion of Australia. “My mantra is what James Cameron always says, ‘If you’re not breaking new ground or trying something new or pushing boundaries, what’s the point of doing it?’” Sparked told FilmInk in 2020. “That’s what I like to always have in the back of my mind. As much as it’s a fun rollercoaster ride, it’s also something that I wanted to plant my flag and say, ‘We can make something for the world stage here, all in Australia by Australian people.’”
Sparke pulled something of a major left turn after his alien invasion double-shot by not only working from a script from someone other than himself (namely Tom Evans), but also by taking on a far grittier project. In Bring Him To Me, Barry Pepper (Saving Private Ryan, The Green Mile) plays the lead role of a getaway driver under orders from a ruthless crime boss who must battle his conscience and drive a young and unsuspecting passenger to an uncertain fate. The cast also includes Sam Neill, Rachel Griffiths, Liam McIntyre, Jennings Brower (Netflix Dreams), Zac Garred (Occupation: Rainfall, Australian Gangster & NCIS) and Jamie Costa. “It’s so surreal to be able to work with Barry, Sam, and Rachel,” Luke Sparke said upon the film’s release. “I’ve been fascinated by morally grey stories like Breaking Bad and Drive, so when presented with the chance to dive deep into the underworld, I couldn’t resist bringing my own flavour to the genre.”
Sparke returned to horror with 2024’s claustrophobic Scurry, and then matched the ambition of his Occupation films with 2025’s cracking Primitive War, an ingenious meld of the Vietnam War and dinosaur sub-genres. The film is based on the cult novel by Ethan Pettus, and sees a squad of soldiers in 1968 discover that dinosaurs have been let loose in the jungles of Vietnam. A recon unit known is sent to an isolated jungle valley to uncover the fate of a missing Green Beret platoon, and soon discover that they are not alone. “I was captivated by the imagery surrounding Ethan’s book and the story it told,” said Sparke during pre-production. “I’ve worked hard on capturing that essence but also the grittiness, horror aspects and military edge. My vison is to feel like the characters have walked out of the film Platoon and into the jaws of the greatest predators the planet has ever known.”
A thrilling, ambitious collision of on-point militaria, blazing machine gun fire, and gnashing prehistoric teeth, Primitive War scored itself an enthusiastic audience of genre fans, and did enough business to warrant a sequel, which has just been greenlit. “The first film was about discovery,” said Luke Sparke in a statement. “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.”
Though a prolific filmmaker who creates his own work through his production company Sparke Films, and does much of that work here in Australia, Luke Sparke still remains something of an unknown commodity to those outside of genre and pop culture circles, and for this talented, highly driven, and utterly industrious Unsung Auteur, that really needs to change…
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs Cyrus Nowrasteh, Morgan Matthews, Tom Laughlin, Diane Keaton, Ed Hunt, Nancy Savoca, Robert Vincent O’Neil, Marvin J. Chomsky, Sam Firstenberg, Jack Sholder, Richard Gray, Giuseppe Andrews, Gus Trikonis, Greydon Clark, Frances Doel, Gordon Douglas, Billy Fine, Craig R. Baxley, Harvey Bernhard, Bert I. Gordon, James Fargo, Jeremy Kagan, Robby Benson, Robert Hiltzik, John Carl Buechler, Rick Carter, Paul Dehn, Bob Kelljan, Kevin Connor, Ralph Nelson, William A. Graham, Judith Rascoe, Michael Pressman, Peter Carter, Leo V. Gordon, Dalene Young, Gary Nelson, Fred Walton, James Frawley, Pete Docter, Max Baer Jr., James Clavell, Ronald F. Maxwell, Frank D. Gilroy, John Hough, Dick Richards, William Girdler, Rayland Jensen, Richard T. Heffron, Christopher Jones, Earl Owensby, James Bridges, Jeff Kanew, Robert Butler, Leigh Chapman, Joe Camp, John Patrick Shanley, William Peter Blatty, Peter Clifton, Peter R. Hunt, Shaun Grant, James B. Harris, Gerald Wilson, Patricia Birch, Buzz Kulik, Kris Kristofferson, Rick Rosenthal, Kirsten Smith & Karen McCullah, Jerrold Freeman, William Dear, Anthony Harvey, Douglas Hickox, Karen Arthur, Larry Peerce, Tony Goldwyn, Brian G. Hutton, Shelley Duvall, Robert Towne, David Giler, William D. Wittliff, Tom DeSimone, Ulu Grosbard, Denis Sanders, Daryl Duke, Jack McCoy, James William Guercio, James Goldstone, Daniel Nettheim, Goran Stolevski, Jared & Jerusha Hess, William Richert, Michael Jenkins, Robert M. Young, Robert Thom, Graeme Clifford, Frank Howson, Oliver Hermanus, Jennings Lang, Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.
