2022 Reviews – Prey

🎵 That’s word, we Prey! Prey! Prey! We got to Prey just to make it today! 🎵 – MC Hammer, sort’ve.

Nah, congratulations to this movie, for coming up with a catchy companion title to Predator. Because what’s the opposite of ‘predator’?! Prey! I can barely recall Shane Black’s The Predator from 2018, but from what I can remember, it’s bad; pray this movie is much more cohesive than that.

Bucking the traditional gender roles of her tribe, Naru (Amber Midthunder) is a young Native American woman who wants to hunt, and she has quite a knack for it too. After seeing a disturbing phenomenon in the clouds, and experiencing some strange scenes while tracking a lion with the boys, Naru believes there’s a predator out there, bigger than a lion, and perhaps one they have never seen before… Prey is directed by Dan Trachtenberg, from a story created alongside screenplay writer Patrick Aison.

When designing a sequel, it’s always difficult to determine how to build – which parts of the original idea need to stay the same, and which parts can be changed up to make the sequel feel fresh and exciting. Prey decides the variable can be human history, and it’s a wonderful idea, perhaps the best premise I’ve come across this year. It’s so simple, because all we really need to know about these Predators is that they are an alien lifeform, who on a most basic level, like to hunt for sport. They could’ve figured out intergalactic space travel thousands of years ago, or time-travel – who knows! But I let my mind run wild a little bit before I actually got around to seeing this movie, which is always dicey for a reviewer to do when it comes to comparing up expectations and the reality of this movie. Plus, due to some considerable hype, I forgot for way too long that I’m not really the biggest fan of the Predator franchise anyway 😆 The Predator is a top echelon cool and iconic movie monsters, for sure, but I don’t share the love for the original Arnold Schwarzenegger juggernaut like many resolute action enthusiasts do. And so, take my review with a grain of salt if you must; I found a couple things that really work for me in Prey, but also a few elements of the movie that I think are faulty.

Naru cops a fair few ‘L’s when the action ramps up, so she avoids that tag of ‘Mary Sue’, but our lead character is still a big know-it-all, yeah? Where are those people that had a big problem with Disney’s live-action remake of Mulan, because Naru runs rings around the boys, who are just as incompetent to ignore her mind you, especially when it comes to skinned snakes, and other peculiarities they should be taking into consideration for themselves. These boys act like they live in a frat house, and just because a girl is speaking, they shouldn’t have to listen – it’s so modern, so tired. What I most admire about the original Predator (or at least how I remember it) is that it pits the alien outsider against the toughest and skilled sonsabitches, who initially find themselves technically and tactically outmatched – I wanted to believe that these native American counterparts were just as skilled in their field, perhaps with an advantage over the militants of the 80s because they had an added respect and understanding of their land. Yet with more basic tools and weaponry, it would make their plight more dangerous and the stakes even higher. With that said, I suppose it’s not so bad that Naru is a savant know-all, but that her tribesmen aren’t, and I found their lack of intuition really disappointing.

But what saves this movie from being a missed opportunity for me is the action. Writer Aison and director Trachtenberg have really thought out how to plant the Predator amongst the environment, with moments like the CGI beetle, mouse, and snake scene encapsulating the dog-eat-dog clash of natures that these movies are about. The bear is my absolute favourite part of the movie, by a mile, even if it goes to the school of Godzilla (2014), shrouding bits of the action behind debris, perhaps to cut down on costs of CGI slightly. For all those years of movie fans clambering for an Alien vs. Predator royale, it turns out that a Predator battling a bear is much more rewarding ❤ I also love how the movie invents a new face-shield for the Predator, instead of relying on the tried-and-true design from the original movie and beyond. I guess this Predator is supposed to look more primitive here, with the helmet resembling bone, but I just prefer to think of it as different, helping the Predators of the earlier movies and this one feel more individualised.

How historically accurate is this movie? It may sound silly to ask when a Predator’s involved, but the more historically accurate this movie is, the more I will be impressed. Like, are those orange flowers real? These are the questions I’ll be looking up sometime in the future. Moreover, I may’ve wanted to experiment with having as little dialogue as possible in this movie – it’s a choice the movie makes to have Naru and her tribesmen speak English, and it’s probably the way to go over subtitles, but I definitely found myself more invested in the quieter scenes because they felt more authentic. I like the idea of the Predator franchise highlighting conflicts of Earth (French colonialism here), and stalling them or even uniting humankind in a moment against a common enemy – again, I think that is somewhat of an undertone in the original, with the soldiers from different ethnic backgrounds, and the sexy prisoner lady being freed to help in the fight against the invisible force in the trees.

The first act of Prey left a sour taste, as it aimed to garner me a sympathetic connection to Naru, but I don’t like the first act of Predator either (a lot of shooting-and asking-questions-later) so I suppose that’s fitting. As I’ve already stated, although I’m up to date with this franchise, it’s not one I’m particularly well-versed in like others, and it’s not one I go back to for repeat viewings. But the premise is still golden; after multiple attempts at Predator sequels, this movie opens up the franchise to vast repeat opportunities, and I would like to see a Predator take on some Chinese soldiers of the Terracotta era next, if my opinion is still allowed on the table 😁 But I won’t forget a wider revelation this movie gave me – everything is once just a crazy idea at a bar, and every premise starts off not existing before it becomes a bright spark in movie folklore. I understand that there have been comics based on the Predator since forever too (and one is actually named Predator 1718, in fact), but it doesn’t matter who came up with the idea first, my revelation still stands. I love old-timey Predator, and I agree with the masses that this is the best Predator movie since the original.

3.0