Pre-Screening Stance:

Simply put: every Predator movie since the first one has been an exercise in decreasing value. That said, Dan Trachtenberg plays well in other people’s sandboxes and the concept seems familiar enough and fresh enough to raise my hopes.

Post-Screening Ramble:

Any good Predator movie really only needs to have one plot: a Predator (the uber-hunter of the entire universe) arrives in an exotic location and goes about, well, hunting people. Chaos ensues, the hunted fight back, so on and so forth. In recent Predator-centric films we’ve had deeper dives into character and back story and lore and though some of them have been entertaining enough, they’ve all tried to do too much. Dan Trachtenberg’s new take on the franchise, Prey, strips the concept down to its very essence. It’s 1716 and a Predator has come to the Comanche Nation to do what it does best. Naru (Amber Midthunder), a young Comanche woman with her eyes set on becoming a hunter, ends up facing off with the Predator. That’s it. And it’s great. Trachtenberg doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel or clutter up the Naru-versus-Predator narrative with unnecessary layering. This is just an extended fight scene that ramps up quickly and then barely takes a breather. There’s a slew of other mildly explored characters – Naru’s brother, the war chief, as well as group of slovenly, French trackers – but almost all of them are just spear fodder for the Predator. Trachtenberg uses the time period, and the abject dearth of technology, to make the Predator even more of an unstoppable force of nature. The fight scenes are fast and well planned out with plenty of “oh shit” death sequences and the added layer of vulnerability adds an enjoyable sheen of tension. Honestly, there’s been so much bloated shit in the genre marketplace these days, that just seeing a sci-fi action flick done lean and done well was a breath a fresh air.

One Last Thought:

Trachtenberg does a good job of exploring the encroaching struggles of the Comanche Nation – colonizing nations, the butchering of the buffalo, etc. – without forcing them down the viewers throat.