When danger threatens her camp, the fierce and highly skilled Comanche warrior Naru sets out to protect her people. But the prey she stalks turns out to be a highly evolved alien predator with a technically advanced arsenal.
- Released: 2022-08-05
- Runtime: 120 minutes
- Genre: Action, Horror, Thrillers
- Stars: Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers, Dane DiLiegro, Harlan Blayne Kytwayhat, Nelson Leis, Stefany Mathias, Ray Strachan, Ray Strachan, Ray Strachan, Stormee Kipp, Michelle Thrush, Julian Black Antelope, Bennett Taylor, Mike Paterson, Tyson Carter, Skye Pelletier, Corvin Mack, Samuel Marty, Ginger Cattleman, Seanna Eagletail, Samiyah Crowfoot, Cody Big Tobacco, Troy Mundle, Curtis Vinish, Stephane Legault, Stephan Schroeder, Eric Beaudoin, Kyle Strauts, Kirk Caouette, Kyle Legere, Tom Woodruff Jr., Alec Gillis, David Penikas, Jon K. Miller, Dakota Beavers
- Director: Dan Trachtenberg
Comments
- altsgrd - 11 January 2023
Finally a good movie since original
I really enjoyed this movie!
Recently I sat down and watched every Predator movie and I have to say this installment was much more enjoyable than I expected. The original is a classic of course and will never be topped (in my opinion), but since then we have had to suffer through boring money-grabs, lazy copy-pasting of the original and a few decent moments here and there.
Because of this I did not expect much from Prey but it really surprised me. We are spoiled with some beautiful visuals and interesting scenery. Theres not as much mindless slaughtering in this one as in other Predator movies and it seems they have tried to focus a bit more on developing a decent story around our protagonist instead which was a breath of fresh air in my book. Prey seems to know exactly what it is supposed to do. The story is straightforward and simple enough so as to not leave any questions unanswered. The action is intense, contained and appropriate to the setting.
Lastly, Prey is a movie that pushes for equality with its female protagonist and messages such as "women can also be hunters". It is laid on a bit thick in the beginning but ultimately it made me care more for the character than I have in previous Predator installments so well done here! - hnt_dnl - 1 January 2023
Surprisingly overrated
The trailers for this new film PREY (2022) in the Predator franchise didn't look promising. And, to me, the end result was no better. But the popular opinion seems to be that Prey is actually a good movie. I couldn't disagree more. I recall when it first came out on Hulu, I was already hearing and reading glowing praise, so I decided to check it out for myself. As I was watching Prey, within about 10 minutes, I could tell this film was going be some tedious, fantasy, female empowerment exercise where the main character would be the alpha and all the males would just be beta simps throughout the film. To no surprise, this was the case. Prey is a film indicative of modern "entertainment" where the goal is to prop up the female character as being the smartest, strongest, and toughest in the room while all the males, who are actually physically stronger, must be dumb, useless, and weak. The most surprising part for me is how many fans of this film either didn't see through the incredibly shallow script or just plain didn't care to. As soon as our "hero" answered her mother's question about why she wanted to hunt with the retort "Because you all think I can't" I knew this was just another film where Hollywood was pushing it's girl power agenda onto the viewers. This movie was not trying to tell an actual story with dynamic, 3-dimensional characters. It was all about propping up it's main female character as being better than all the men in her tribe.
First, the main character looks incredibly slight and weak and it's not just that she's small in stature, but she doesn't look to be in any kind of physical shape. There were those blatantly obvious CGI scenes of her miraculously throwing around her rope-axe weapon into trees and yanking them out, even though that would require a lot of strength. Even a 200-lb guy would get tired after a while, but she mysteriously never did. Second, there was the manipulative scene of her pulling herself out of a mud sinkhole with the axe firmly in place between 2 trees. There's no way she should physically have been able to do that. She would have surely sunk. In fact, she was already a goner when she was in the mud and somehow pulled herself out of it without any kind of grip or traction on anything before she even miraculously got the axe between the trees. There were many scenes in the film where she accomplished physical feats that were way above her tiny stature, like beating up the French trappers and predictably in the end beating up the Predator himself. But the writers thought there were sly by having her "struggle" early on to hunt and kill animals and in the fight against her tribe member. But the plot must make sense. How does she struggle against a teen boy about the same size as her, yet so effortlessly annihilate muscular grown men and an alien who could wipe her out with one blow? Basically, she willed herself to do it. In one day, she goes from inept, helpless, and useless to being the biggest badass in the forest.
Second, the acting was godawful! The main actress had this dumb, bug-eyed look on her face for the entirety of the film which I guess was supposed to simulate shock, fear, and emotion, but it's obvious this is one of her first acting gigs, if not her very first one. And her character was extremely nasty and unlikable throughout the movie with a huge chip on her shoulder that it made impossible for me to root for her. The supporting cast was incredibly bland and non-existent. The writers gave the minor actors nothing to work with. Everyone existed to cater to the main character as if she were the center of the universe. And everyone talked in modern dialect. The characters sounded very 21st century. It was like listening to people speak in twitter and text language. Much ado has been made about the brother being the best character, but even he was stagnated by a misogynist heavy vibe. Every male acted with a caveman mentality, which was obviously purposeful because the script needed the men to be obnoxious, abusive, bullying jerks to sympathize more with the girl. Didn't work for me because none of it felt authentic or natural. There was a terrible scene of one of the male hunters giving a "men are better" speech to the girl right before he got mutilated by a CGI tiger which strangely hesitated to kill her. The writers were literally telling us in that scene "women good, men bad." The French hunters were filthy and disgusting while the girl's makeup stayed in tact and she never sweated. Again, "women clean, men dirty."
Third, the CGI and action was awful in this. There was something fake and cartoonish about the way that the forest animals looked. The tiger, the snake, the bear, the cloak for the predator looked so bad. And this movie is 35 years after the original Predator where everything still looks great to this day. In fact, the entire forest/woods setting felt incredibly lifeless and stagnant due to shoddy camera work. The low budget really showed itself as the movie wore on. The cameras would speed up scenes to make it look like the girl could actually do all this amazing stuff, yet the actress looks so out of shape and weak that I didn't buy any of it.
The biggest gripe for me in this movie was the insane amount of plot armor for the main character. Why did the Predator keep leaving the girl alone when she had a weapon on her the whole time? Throughout the movie, she had a weapon on her. The first film in '87 established that the reason why the alien didn't go after Anna was because she wasn't armed. But the girl in this movie was armed throughout the film. So what gives? And she kept getting saved time and again by the very men who the writers made out to be the scum of the Earth, including getting saved repeatedly by her dog and the Predator himself. Then the end of the movie has this ridiculous fight scene where she gets hit by the Predator and thrown around only for her to defy physics, like pulling him closer to that rock that saved her from his blade weapon and yanking his 500-lb body into the sinkhole when in fact SHE should have been the one pulled into it! Then we get her victory scream at the end basically yelling GIRL POWER. She goes back to her tribe after getting all of her tribe's hunters killed, the camera shows closeups only of her and the female tribe members smiling at each other. To hell with all the males who just died. And I've actually seen people, some of whom I actually have (or had) respect for say that this film isn't woke or has any kind of agenda! Lol The entire film is about girl power. Sadly, this is the state of affairs of modern entertainment. People will call almost anything a masterpiece nowadays.
