Prey is the newest entry in the Predator franchise directed by Dan Tratchenberg who directed 10 Cloverfield Lane back in 2016 and this new instalment takes place on the Great Northern Plains in September 1719 as a young tracker (Amber Midthunder) is keen to prove to her tribe that she can be a hunter but little does her tribe know that another hunter has come onto their land and seeks the thrill of hunting the best Earth has to offer.
Prey has its strong moments for sure and the first of those is Amber Midthunder as the lead heroine, she is very good here and really gets you on side with her as she tries to trace and later fight what it is that’s hunting her tribe out in the forest out near their camp and we see her go through the stages of learning to properly hunt and devise weapons to trap and kill her enemies before they kill her and that journey is a good one.
Also there are some good Predator kill moments in the back half of the film even if the blood effects look very computer-ish unlike the kills in the original film directed by John McTiernan in 1987.
But aside from those I found this film to be very forgettable and the reasons are mainly 2:
- The first of these is that like the other Predator sequels that came after the success of the original film there is very little tension or mystery on show here as we more or less know what’s coming and what to expect and because of that this film has to work that much harder to build that sense of dread and mystery and horror and I don’t think it does that very well as we see the Predator in numerous closeups before its revealed to the tribe of hunters and it saps the film of a lot of tension as you just sit there waiting for the kills to start.
And this reminded me a lot of something that James Cameron had to say about Aliens his beloved sequel to Alien and it was along the lines of feeling that in devising his film he felt that he couldn’t recreate that sense of mystery and dread that Ridley Scott did with the original Alien film as the audience would not only know what was coming but be sitting in their seat waiting for it to come and he was right and the other Predator films have suffered from this problem and its hurt all of them including this movie.
- And the second is that Tratchenberg’s direction just isn’t a patch on John McTiernan’s in terms of creating the sense of mood and tension and making the action scenes feel real and exciting as here they not only feel like a computer game but the look of the cloudy plains and nighttime scenes suffers from that digital camera murkiness that is becoming more and more noticeable in movies nowadays.
And its really starting to become a problem as when film cameras were being used it felt like it was easier to either shoot at night or in low lighting conditions or it was easier to tweak that footage in the lab and/or in post production but then again maybe if I had gotten a chance to see this in a dark cinema instead of at home on my TV maybe this wouldn’t have been as noticeable a problem.
And that was my last noticeable thought regarding this movie, I wished I was seeing it in a cinema because I struggled a little bit to get through this film on my TV and its something that streaming movies are feeling more and more for me and its why I rarely sit down and watch these streaming exclusive movies nowadays, I want to watch movies in my church the cinema that’s where they belong and call me old fashioned on this front but its where movies should be seen first and foremost before being seen on home video/streaming.
And so that was Prey and its fine but I would just stick with the original Predator film from 1987 and leave it at that, 2 out of 5.
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