PREY REVIEW

Prey (2022) Review

 

After a direct sequel (Predator 2), two crossovers with the Alien franchise (Alien vs. Predator and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem), a more tangential sequel (Predators), and a reboot-ish sequel (The Predator), the Predator franchise has finally got a prequel. It’s really only a prequel in the sense of taking place before the original Jungle hunter stalked and eliminated Arnold Schwarzenegger’s squad of badass soldiers in 1987. Every successive Predator movie has featured a new member of the tribe of extraterrestrial hunters along with new human characters, and Prey is no exception—except that it is an exception in one crucial way. It is decidedly good.

When I heard director Dan Trachtenberg was helming the new Predator movie, the first one since 20^th Century Fox was acquired by Disney, I was not excited. The last Predator movie, directed and co-written by Shane Black (who starred in the original and helped rewrite the script on-set), stupidly called The Predator, was an embarrassment to the series that I couldn’t take seriously, leaving me with little hope for any future movies. If even Shane Black couldn’t get it right, then what could anyone else do? Well, they could do this. Prey goes back to basics. Dan Trachtenberg has been around for a while now, but he hasn’t directed all that much. I didn’t like 10 Cloverfield Lane, the sort-of-sequel most other people did enjoy. Prey is a totally different beast. This is a concept he and screenwriter Patrick Aison had even before Disney bought Fox, and it seems they were (thankfully) able to fulfill their vision without compromising due to studio meddling.

Amber Midthunder plays Naru, a young Comanche woman who would rather be out hunting dangerous wildlife with her brother Taabe than sitting around gathering healing herbs. The year is 1719, and a predator has arrived on the Great Plains to hunt the most dangerous game it can find. With her customized tomahawk, trusty dog, and no fear, Naru faces the otherworldly foe stalking her tribe. Prey is a straight-forward story and accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do. Compared to every other Predator film since the original, it feels the most autonomous and confident. There isn’t any stupid humor or bizarre sci-fi bullshit like in The Predator, there aren’t painfully-forced callbacks to the original like in Predators, and it doesn’t overindulge in the monster madness like the AVP movies. With the exception of one line of dialogue ripped from the original Predator and a reference to Predator 2, there is nothing distracting about the way Prey connects to the overall franchise. 

Amber Midthunder is a terrific lead, and we get to spend enough time with her character to actually sympathize with her and root for her. Having a female lead character in a series that began as the most macho tough guy movie ever was a clever choice. Even better is that the setting justifies that choice and makes it feel like a natural story. This isn’t cheaply forcing female empowerment like that annoying moment in Avengers: Endgame where every female hero joins forces in one shot, or having a female lead who is good at everything because she’s simply written that way like Rey in the Star Wars sequels. Naru goes through it in this movie, and she uses her skills and intelligence to combat the threats that oppose her. Even beyond Midthunder, the entire cast is great, and everyone felt authentic. I loved that there were no big actors in any of the roles. Having the Comanche people played by Indigenous actors brought a level of overall believability to Prey that I haven’t felt in a Predator movie since the original.

The cast being primarily Comanche’s didn’t just make Prey stand out amid the other Predator movies, but makes it stand out in the action/horror genres in general. They are the heroes of this story, their culture is depicted in a highly realistic and respectful way, and the French fur trappers are antagonists (in addition to the predator, of course). I saw someone on Twitter point out how placing genre stories in different time periods is a clever way of creating new opportunities story-wise, and Prey makes a strong case for this being true. We get a fresh new setting and vibe, without losing out on the gory Predator violence which has come to be expected—and it is intensely brutal. Prey might be the goriest one since Predator 2, but I didn’t find it excessively gratuitous.

Something I liked was the contrast between Prey and the original Predator. In Predator, the point was to depict the most un-killable dudes you could imagine being killed by an alien hunter, which made it scary, and here the point is to take that same alien hunter and put people up against it that seem comparatively less exaggeratedly strong/well-equipped, which makes it scary in a different kind of way. But, this predator underestimates the Comanches, especially Naru, who proves herself to be a cunning warrior even against the physically superior creature. Everything is set up well, the payoffs are mainly all satisfactory, and there isn’t anything significantly dumb or far-fetched.

The predator itself never felt glorified. Thinking back on all previous Predator follow-ups, each one takes the time to give us a really good look at the creature design just for the sake of showing it (which I don’t mind, to be clear), but Prey doesn’t really do that. It doesn’t feel restrained either, necessarily, it’s just focused on the story it’s telling and doesn’t take too many moments away from that focus to needlessly pander to what fans want to see. I’m reminded of certain shots in the latest Godzilla films where a shot exists just to show the audience the monster. I never detected anything like that. It’s not that we don’t get a money shot of this new predator or ever see it clearly, but every time it’s on camera it feels like there’s purpose beyond just showing off the effects and the design. On that note, I feel like the predator was shown a bit too often in the first half of the movie, which requires some extrapolation, because technically it isn’t shown.

We get several moments with the predator hunting and tracking non-human prey, but it uses its invisibility, so we don’t really see it, but it’s still there, and I think they relied a bit too heavily on cutting directly to the predator to keep viewers watching. I can’t help but compare it to the original. Thinking back on Predator, we got a lot more of the heat vision POV shots or ominous shots of the jungle which worked to create suspense and never let us forget something was stalking them without needing to show it or cut away from the character development or other action beats.

I can’t really complain about what Prey does with the predator in the first act, though, because what we see it do is pretty cool and builds it up as a real threat with its purpose clearly explained using just visual storytelling. Having said that, the way these scenes are directed just have the predator blatantly there, which I found a bit disappointing. Even the sequel Predators did this more effectively, I think, in teasing the predators stalking the characters in the first act before revealing them without just cutting right to them, instead using more creative writing and directing choices.  

I really like what they did with the predator itself in terms of design and characterization. The actor in the suit, Dane DiLiegro, is perhaps the best actor to portray a predator since Kevin Peter Hall first defined the creature’s signature movements and mannerisms in Predator and Predator 2. Not to discredit some of the great predators and the actors playing them in other sequels, but this “Feral” predator as it’s become known came across as really distinct and imposing, despite being the smallest physically and the least advanced technologically. There’s a little moment that I loved when it readjusts its grip on a weapon during battle, and its penchant for hand-to-hand combat lent to some great physicality between it and the human characters. Every predator has been redesigned somewhat since the original, but I think this one looks the scariest, with and without its mask. Its arsenal of weapons was a nice mix of familiar and new, the way it used its weapons was interesting and made sense, and the mix of cgi and practical effects worked pretty well.

On the topic of other visuals, some of the animal cgi was lacking. The bear in this movie is a far cry from the wholly realistic-looking grizzly that nearly killed Leo in The Revenant, which is a shame, because the bear features into a great scene, and the effects took me out of the movie a bit. Overall, the cinematography was quite good. There were some shots of the wilderness that looked gorgeous, and aside from the cgi animals, the visuals never stretched beyond what they were capable of making look believable.

I don’t have that many notable complaints with Prey. The music was good, but I can’t compare it to Alan Silvestri’s scores for Predator and Predator 2, because comparatively it’s a much subtler and smaller score, but Silvestri’s scores fit the first two Predator movies just as well as I think Sarah Schachner’s score fits Prey (I’m just glad they didn’t re-use Silvestri’s music like Predators and The Predator did). I didn’t find the pacing too slow, though some might in the first half, but I did find the horror and suspense ebbed and flowed, it didn’t have a consistent balance of either.

In the end, Prey also doesn’t add much to the lore of the franchise, which is fine because I appreciated the brevity of this movie (it’s a pretty solid 100 minutes), but I don’t mean that just in terms of the creature. The story is pretty similar to the original despite the different setting, and without spoiling anything, there’s nothing particularly dissatisfying about the beginning, middle, or end, but it also doesn’t do much that’s different with the plot beyond the setting, and there also wasn’t any one moment or line of dialogue that stuck with me as particularly unique once the credits rolled. My biggest disappointment has nothing to do with the actual movie, it’s to do with the release of Prey.

After a year of not being able to see new movies in theaters and nearly missing Godzilla vs. Kong on the big screen (like Prey, I saw it for the first time at home), it came as a huge disappointment to find out Prey was only being released on streaming (Hulu in the US, Disney+ for us Canadians). How is it that a terrible sequel like 2018’s The Predator can get a wide release in theaters but a great prequel like Prey is restricted to home viewing only? Is it a sign of the times? In the wake of the pandemic are big movies like this really just not going to be released in theaters anymore? To not even have the option felt confusing and unprincipled. There are some explanations online, but I don’t care.

I would have loved to have seen Prey for the first time in a dark movie theater with a bunch of other fans gasping and cheering then chatting about it afterwards as we walk out through the lobby, and while it is convenient and cheaper to watch at home, it just isn’t the same initial experience. Unlike the last Predator movie, Prey actually deserves to reach as many viewers as possible, fans deserve to have the option to pay fifteen bucks to see it on a big screen if they want, and the filmmakers deserve to have their work seen and appreciated the way it was meant to be seen. And what about a home video release? Unlike The Predator, I would watch Prey again and want it in my collection. I hope I don’t need to still have a Disney+ subscription if I ever want to watch it again a few years down the road.

After saying at the end of my review for The Predator in 2018 that I would be happy to see the Predator franchise simmer for a few more years, I’m more than pleased with this new entry less than four years later. Prey is the kind of Predator movie I wanted to see, and it delivered. It’s too soon for me to say whether or not it’s the best Predator movie since the original overall, but in terms of characters, setting, directing, acting, and a mix of suspense and action, it is leaps and bounds ahead of the majority of other Predator movies. I highly recommend checking out Prey (especially since it’s so easy to do, just click on it and watch it if you have Disney+), and I think it will be entertaining for fans of the original/sequels as well as for anyone who hasn’t seen a Predator movie before.