Prey (2022 film)

Category: sci-fi action/horror

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You may remember in my Texas Chainsaw Massacre review that I opined "sometimes you just have to leave well-enough alone". Well, movie studios will do movie studio things, such as try to squeeze more dollars out of an established IP. So with that in mind, we get another entry in the Predator movie franchise - the 2022 movie Prey, directed by Dan Trachtenberg (who also did 10 Cloverfield Lane, which I think is a great movie in its own right)

Given that the most recent movies in the Predator franchise have been Predators and The Predator, let's see if a female-led Predator entry that highlights Native American culture can do any better.

The plot:

The story takes place in the Northern Great Plains (which is generally taken to be anywhere between Arkansas and Canada) and is set in the year 1719, thus acting as a prequel (of sorts) to the rest of the Predator franchise.

Naru (Amber Midthunder) is a female Comanche skilled in herbal medicine and tracking, but also wants to prove herself at hunting just like her brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers). With her dog Sarii in tow, she spends a lot of time out in the forest honing her skills.

While in the forest, she sees the Predator ship enter earth's atmosphere and rushes back to tell everyone - however it turns out that Puhi has been taken by a cougar (but the subtitles and dialogue say it's a lion). Naru joins the hunting party, believing it is the perfect opportunity to prove her worth. However, she falls off a tree and knocks herself out right as she was about to strike, and after she wakes up worse for wear in her tent, she finds her brother was able to make the kill and has been elevated to War Chief.

More determined than ever, with very large tracks and skinned snake fresh in her mind, she goes against her tribe and back into the forest. Before too long, she is chased by a massive bear and while she is granted an initial reprieve when the bear goes after Sarii, that reprieve doesn't last long when Sarii returns being chased by said bear. To escape the bear, Naru hides in pile of logs which grants her a front-row seat to the bear being ripped apart by an invisible being that handles the bear with ease.

On her way back, she comes across members of her tribe who belittle her for thinking she's seen a monster from a children's story. However, as it turns out, monsters are real and the Predator has his way with some of the Comanche tribe while Naru manages to escape…only to get caught in a leg trap laid by the French.

Naru wakes up in a cage amongst a throng of drunk Frenchmen where one of the Frenchmen, Raphael, tries to get some clues out of Naru as to what the Predator actually is. How a French person expects a Comanche to speak English is beyond me, but never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Unfortunately, the French have also captured Taabe and they come up with the genius idea of tying Naru and Taabe to a tree to use as bait for the Predator. The bait sure draws the Predator in, but not with the results that the French had in mind.

Naru and Taabe escape, Naru rescues her dog and stumbles across Raphael who is doing a half-hearted Lieutenant Dan impersonation after losing (only) one of his legs. Raphael trades his pistol for a dose of medicine to relieve the pain of his lost leg, which unwittingly gives Naru a vital clue on how to handle the Predator.

Naru and Taabe get into a fairly one-sided fight with The Predator, but Taabe uses his dying moments to give Naru time to escape. Naru now decides to turn the tables and uses the last Frenchman as bait for the Predator, setting up the final showdown where Naru shoots the Predator in the head only for his mask to come off. After some rumble in the jungle stuff, Naru manages to trick the Predator into shooting itself with its own high-tech weaponry (which after 5 watches, I still can't work out how that actually happened).

Naru returns to her tribe with the severed head of the Predator, thus earning her promotion in the tribe, upon which she warns that the tribe better get moving. In the closing credits, it is implied that three replacement Yautja make their way to earth.

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As I said in the beginning of the review, this movie didn't have a high bar to clear. Alien vs Predator and Alien vs Predator: Requiem were stupid (though fun in parts), Predators was somewhat OK (mostly due to Adrien Brody) and The Predator was frankly a bunch of hokey horseshit, so while it wouldn't have been too hard for this movie to rank higher in the anthology than the others, I think a bad Predator movie would have killed the franchise. Thankfully, this is not a bad Predator movie, and while I have very little memory of Predator 2 (except for that five second scene in the penthouse, if you know what I mean!), I feel very little in way of qualms in calling this the second-best Predator movie in the franchise.

Amber Midthunder is actually in almost every scene, and with so much screen time, there's ample opportunity for her weaknesses to be exposed. But no, I thought Midthunder did a great job - she's believable as someone who wishes to be taken seriously by her peers and elders, and trains and works to get there. She ain't no Mary-Sue and she isn't girl-bossing her way through. Well done, script-writers!

The rest of the cast did their job well, the effects were decent (CGI bears and all), the story wasn't too convoluted. And if you can comprehend the idea that the Predator that comes to earth in this movie is more of a junior variety that doesn't have the smarts or the cool tech the later Predators get, the final result isn't too much of a stretch.

However, we do get what I call "The Hunt For Red October Problem". For those of you a bit too young to remember, "The Hunt For Red October" was a movie about a Russian submarine captain who escapes the Soviet-era Russia in his sub (the Red October) with his crew to defect to the United States. In a weird quirk of casting, someone decided that Russian naval captain Marko Ramius and Second-In-Command Vasily Borodin would best be portrayed by…famed Scottish actor Sean Connery and famed New Zealand actor Sam Neill. That creates this duality where non-Russian actors are conveying a Russian story, in English - Scottish accent and all. And so we come across the same kind of issue in this movie - the Comanche are speaking English, which makes it weird when in the scene where the Frenchman Raphael tries to extract information out of Naru by speaking…English…to a woman who would never have heard (or spoken) English before.

But look, who am I to quibble about historical accuracy in a movie about an bipedal alien visiting earth to kill for sport?

Overall, a decent entry into the Predator franchise that doesn't quite have the simplistic charm of the very original, but is a good way to kill 90 minutes!

STAR RATING: 3.75/5