Film Review - The Predator (2018)

The Predator is the newest entry in the Predator franchise and this time Shane Black who played Hawkins in the original movie from 1987 writes and directs this new entry where the Predator once again lands on Earth and murders a group of special forces soldiers but one of them a captain (Boyd Holbrook) is interrogated to find out why but a local scientist (Olivia Munn) may know what it is and it is indeed the Predator.

I was keen to see this new Predator movie due to Mr Black being in the directors chair, this is a man who starred in the original Predator film and saw John McTiernan make it close hand, he wrote the original Lethal Weapon from that same year and just recently directed the Nice Guys with Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling.

And just recently I got to revisit the original Predator in its new 4K release and it still works perfectly so this new movie was in for the Hunt.

And it deserved to be killed off in that Hunt as this movie was very, very, very disappointing for me but before I delve into those reasons I want to start off by talking about what I did like and firstly I did think the film had some fun bloody violence that well earns its MA15 rating and I did enjoy finally seeing some blood be spilt during the Predator kills plus I did think Mr Holbrook and Ms Munn did a good job in their roles.

And lastly Henry Jackman’s score really nicely conveys a similar style and feel to Alan Silvestri’s score for the original movie.

But like I said this movie was a big disappointment for me and its time to dig into why as there are 2 key reasons:

- Firstly Black’s script which he co wrote with Fred Dekker is a tonal mess, trying to juggle the seriousness of the Predator hunt with the laughs he tries to get out of the group of soldiers and it really doesn’t work as the humour the guys go for is very cringe worthy and at times you can see that their going for that big cinema audience laugh along and it just falls completely flat.

And because of that I didn’t really care all that much if the Predator came along and killed every single one of them as after a while their banter really got on my nerves and I didn’t really find them very funny at all.

- Secondly this same script overcomplicates what should have been a simple story with multiple storylines that don’t really mesh together, there’s a story about a young boy played by Jacob Tremblay from Room and Wonder and then there’s the side plot with the other soldiers and then there’s the story about the Predators themselves and I just sat there thinking “Just give me a simple story with a Predator and its prey” and instead it felt like the mistakes of the Prometheus series that tried to tie into the Alien franchise were being repeated somewhat here and like Alien and Aliens simpler is better story wise.

And so that was the Predator the kind of movie disappointment that really stings as I was really keen to see it and the promise of Shane Black directing one of these films and it fails in the very areas John McTiernan got right in the original, its time for this hunter to take his quarry and retire as like Alien it has well and truly had its day, 1 out of 5.