Prey review: A back-to-basics, straight-to-streaming Predator movie with style

Before Disney bought 20th Century Fox in 2017, the film studio had become known as a purveyor of durable genre movies like the Alien, Predator, and X-Men series — and also as an interfering cost-cutter, defined by its willingness to set pivotal action sequences in generic parking lots and Canadian forests. (See The Darkest Minds, ElektraOr X-Men. The Last StandFor examples of Fox’s worst aesthetic, see, for example,. These reputations weren’t mutually exclusive; sometimes, a Fox movie would strike up a pleasing balance between muscular thrills and relative limitations, like The WolverineThis is a small-scale movie about a superhero who makes use of its original woody location.

Prey is the latest Fox production to capture both sides of that Fox history, while also nodding toward the studio’s new identity as a Disney-owned content mill for Hulu. This is the latest Predator movie, which was released in 1987. It’s a simplified version of the sci-fi adventure and will be available straight on Hulu.

A new Predator film could be sent directly to streaming. Like a lot of R-rated sci-fi series, this one hasn’t been popular in years. 2010’s PredatorsAnd 2018’s PredatorThe series has a loyal following, which also shows that its audience is small.Prey attempts to bring the series even further back to its roots than those films did — not that the other Predator Movies have moved away from the classic formula of gigantic, mask-wearing, alien monsters that hunt humans and then fight back.

Photo: David Bukach/20th Century Studios

Still, there’s an admirable minimalism in the idea of a prequel that goes so far back in time that the franchise’s previous characters won’t be born for hundreds of years. PreyThis story takes place in North America’s Great Plains in 1719. Naru (Amber Midthunder) is a young Comanche woman eager to complete the training rituals required to become a hunter in her tribe. Predictably, her family and tribemates disagree with her willingness to undertake this task. They encourage her to support her people by encouraging her. Naru will only hunt down an unknown creature that appears to be stalking their territory after a string of strange signs is revealed.

Prey’s early scenes flirt with minimalism without fully committing to it. Naru trains herself in solitude with a custom-made weapon — a throwing ax she makes retrievable by tying on a rope — and she fulfills her tribal obligations alongside her trusty canine sidekick. An 18-century Predator, arriving on Earth, explores the Great Plains. He mainly observes smaller predatory animal in action and then takes them out. This seems easy for an 8-foot, alien with far more advanced technology than this one. But it’s the Predator equivalent to a tourist visiting local restaurants. They eventually meet more frequently.

The satisfying, but not yet inevitable clash is here. PreyThere are some concessions for those less adventure-oriented audiences. The native Comanche characters don’t make full use of the language. They also avoid dialogue when possible. Instead, they speak in English. It sounds suspiciously familiar to modern screenwriters, who try to hide their inability or unwillingness to imitate something older or less immediate. The movie’s director Dan Trachtenberg is prone to cutting corners whenever he has an opportunity to hold off for a scene, or any moment of greater lyricism or mystery. He may be out there in the woods, but he isn’t exactly communing with the spirit of Terrence Malick.

Image courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Trachtenberg made the same pared-down extension of his franchise Cloverfield Lane, 10One thing is certain about a sane person: Prey: efficiency. The movie is about a young girl who finds herself in an awkward situation with an alien man wearing a skull mask. The other members of Naru’s tribe are there to naysay and/or become Predator fodder. An unemployed band of fur trader smugglers also has some hunting bodies. Trachtenberg is able to showcase the benefits of their brief, but impressive lives by using overhead shots. He may use them for the lay-of the-land shots or give the camera enough space to see through obstacles such as a sticky mud pit.

He also makes series-best use of the Predator’s neon-green blood, as an accent color against the more muted, natural tones of the film’s setting. It is clear and cleanly shot. One scene pitting Naru against the fur traders is especially impressive, considering it doesn’t involve the movie’s iconic monster.

The strengths as well as the weaknesses Prey place a lot of pressure on Midthunder, playing the only human in the movie who isn’t there solely for narrative convenience. With her expressive, watchful eyes and tribal makeup, she delivers an athletic, charismatic performance. She is a different kind of hero than past heroes. Predator movies is telegraphed right upfront in dialogue, as her brother questions her desire to prove herself: “You want to hunt something that’s hunting you?”

He isn’t talking about the Predator yet at that point, but he might as well be. Naru will have to actively search for the alien when the moment comes. He never recognizes her as an opponent worthy of hunting. The Predator, like everyone else, underestimates Naru and keeps his eyes on more worthy, showier prey. The simplicity of “women can kill as good as men” threatens to turn Naru into a Predator-fighting, bloodthirsty girlboss, but the no-nonsense scrappiness of Midthunder’s performance keeps that from happening.

You could easily exaggerate. Prey because it’s a direct-to-streaming movie that could have passed muster on the big screen. It’s about as good as the other PredatorThe movies aren’t a game-changing breakthrough. It is a shame, though, that Disney didn’t opt for a simultaneous theatrical and streaming release, given that this August is a relatively barren month for wide releases. The movie could make a great summer drive-in film, following the example of other non-Fox features such as “Woman versus Nature”. CrawlOr The Shallows.

Photo: David Bukach/20th Century Studios

Summer entertainment that actually works as an exciting, unfussy B-movie isn’t an area the modern version of Big Disney typically explores. It’s probably too much to hope that the Fox acquisition would diversify the types of movies Disney makes, rather than simply eliminating another group of titles from the release schedule.

Maybe that’s why Prey doesn’t feel shameless, even though it theoretically embodies everything that’s tedious and unspectacular about big-studio filmmaking: a franchise extension traded from one subsidiary to another, designed to induce nostalgia pangs and inspire Easter-egg hunts. Hint: Other than the mandatory Predator dialogue riff, there’s a connection to Predator 2. afoot, too.) Trachtenberg’s film wields the elemental appeal of watching sci-fi/horror weirdness bend the boundaries of the human-against-nature conflict.Prey doesn’t worship the past — not of its country, studio, genre, or franchise. It has an acute understanding of where it fits in each of these histories.

PreyHulu launches debut on August 5.