I am in no way a fan of the Predator franchise as a whole, but the first Predator is a childhood favorite of mine, so I do harbor some love for the IP in some way. Admittedly, I was not excited when this movie got announced and was actually highly skeptical of it. While this is certainly good, I felt it was plagued with a substantial amount of minor issues that ended up hindering it quite a bit.
SYNOPSIS : A skilled Comanche warrior protects her tribe from a highly evolved alien predator that hunts humans for sport, fighting against the wilderness, dangerous colonisers and this mysterious creature to keep her people safe.
I felt like while watching this movie I was at war with myself. At times, the choices being made (filmmaking-wise) I was totally on board with, and then in the very next scene, the movie would almost betray itself. The first opening minutes of the film are almost entirely silent, which reminded me a lot of the first Predator’s famous third act, but then, there were scenes where the points the film was trying to make were spoon-fed to the viewer through some pretty stiff dialogue.
I felt the same way about the way violence is portrayed in the movie. In some scenes, it was gruesome and unafraid to show - in full - what was happening on screen; but, in others, the camera either cuts away or blurs what’s happening on purpose, which I found to be very jarring at times. When the movie does go all in on the violence though, it’s very entertaining and ups the ante quite a bit. And the action on display here is, for the most part, very well directed.
There’s one scene, in particular, involving a group of trappers that I found to be fantastic. The best kind of action scene is the kind that evolves as it goes on, and here, it does exactly that. Here, the Predator is really let off the leash, and the movie lets you spend time just watching him tear into people with no distraction, which I really appreciated. There’s one shot in particular in the latter half of this scene that was a breathtaking display of one-shot stuntwork that I almost wish the film had more of.
This action scene was SO GOOD it turns out, that it actually ended up being the high point of the entire movie, which caused everything that came after it to feel a little anti-climactic. This is a common problem in action movies like Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, for example, where the most intense and riveting scene is put right smack in the middle, causing the rest of it to feel underwhelming. I still thought the final confrontation was good, but seriously, nothing will ever top that original Predator third act, and that’s just a cold hard fact.
Amber Midthunder as Naru gives us a good solid protagonist to root for, and I think she’s good in the movie. She’s very clever and driven, and I liked the throughline of her story in the movie overall. However, I couldn’t care less about pretty much everyone else in this movie, which was something the original Predator did very well. The colorful side characters there had me invested, but here, most of them are actually kind of assholes for the majority of the film. Granted, the spotlight is primarily on Naru, but still.
Subtlety is really important in these kinds of movies that are sequels to a very prominent pop-culture landmark, and this movie does quite well with that. There are neat little nods to the other films here and there that I thought were cool, but there was one line calling back to the original film that I just wasn’t on board with. I don’t know if it was the set-up, or the execution, but it just didn’t work.
I found the first act of this movie to be really strangely put together. It was almost like there were pieces missing for no reason, as I was watching it I couldn’t help but notice the incoherent nature of it. A character goes missing all of a sudden that we haven’t even been introduced to, and I was confused as I wasn’t sure if that point had been made or not. There was set-up for the tribal parts of the movie alongside the Predator side, and some of these scenes were tonally clashing a bit as well side to side.
Oh also, I don’t know if this is a hot take or not, but I’m not a fan of the new Predator design. Sorry?
Prey is an intriguing concept for a franchise that has been long drawn out on using the same forgetful tactics, and while that does make it entertaining, I felt as if the movie was slightly unbalanced at times. Dan Trachtenberg’s style works perfectly here, but the flat characters and slightly predictable plot keep this movie from being so much better.
6/10
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