20th Century Studios
Although I have been aware about the classic John McTiernan 1987 movie Predator for a long time, I only actually watched it from beginning to end a few years ago, just in time to watch the more recent The Predator (from director Shane Black) a year after that. But although that original movie is a stone-cold 80s action classic that is more than just a simple, hacky action movie, none of the sequels have remotely lived up to the first one — until now.
Prey comes from director Dan Trachtenberg, in only his second feature film, written by fairly new writer Patrick Aison. In 1717 in the Great Plains, we follow a few people from a Comanche tribe, primarily from the perspective of young Naru (Amber Midthunder). Naru is an excellent tracker and healer who’s learned from the village elder women, but what she really wants is to be a hunter like the guys — particularly her especially competent brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers).
While Naru struggles to be respected and to actually be good enough, she spots a mysterious light streaming across the sky — she has no idea what it is, but we the audience are well aware it is the spaceship of a Predator (Dane DiLiegro). When we eventually spot the hunter, he has advanced technology, but perhaps not as advanced as the one 250 years later in the first Predator movie — more laser targeted high tech projectiles and less laser blasts.
But he’s clearly a horrifying threat, and the Comanche people have no idea what’s out there, even though they are the furthest thing from cowards, and are expert hunters and trackers in their own right — and on their own turf. They are coming from a place of weakness though because they have no idea about what an alien could even be, even though they at least understand the concept of guns from the various white people they’ve encountered.
Only Naru seems to grasp the alien nature of the threat, meaning something that none of them are prepared for — and part of the movie is at first her trying to protect her brother from what he might be underestimating. But once everyone’s on board, things get more complicated when they run across a bunch of French soldiers (speaking in unsubtitled French so we really don’t know what’s going on) that might be on their own hunt.
What follows is an increasingly badass and violent series of action scenes, with nothing spared on the goriness or brutality. We know that Naru has no chance in a purely physical fight against the Predator, and perhaps no human does (even Arnold in the first one had to resort to trickery), so we can anticipate the cleverness that’s coming.
But it all progresses in a way that completely feels logical, ramping up the tension and excitement, with a gorgeously shot series of scenes and a kickass score. I found myself supremely affected by the ending, in a way that’s quite rare for action movies — but the reason is the excellent pacing and writing surrounding a supremely impressive performance from Amber Midthunder.
I remember her as a badass from the late Legion, but this is an even more badass performance, layered and complicated — hopefully it’s a star making one too, she deserves it. The other actors are well done too, with a particularly support from Dakota Beavers as Naru’s capable but empathetic brother Taabe.
There’s some CGI stuff here, of course, but it didn’t bother me, and there’s plenty of great practical stuff too. This is such a great movie, I feel like personally I like it more than Predator, although it’s hard to judge it in a vacuum as that first one was such a game changer. Although the first was great and surprisingly complex, it doesn’t have quite the emotion this one does — but I wouldn’t argue with someone that still prefers the first one, as long as they agree this is the second best.
Prey has a run time of 1 hour 39 minutes, and is rated R for strong bloody violence, and is streaming exclusively on Hulu in the US.
20th Century Studios
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