Prey Movie Review: Convinces, Entertains and Every Now And Then Makes Us Jump
Stars: Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers, Dane DiLiegro
Director: Dan Trachtenberg
Streaming Platform: Hulu and Disney
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and half stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
It took more than thirty years for the Predator saga to find a film worthy of the 1987 progenitor starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Each of the films in the series dedicated to aliens conceived by Jim and John Thomas contained lights but above all shadows of projects that never managed to find the fulcrum of the first film, touching it more directly (Predator 2, Predators) or moving away from it transversely. (The Predator). This was the case with the spin-offs, which used the macro-icons of the cinematic imaginary to confront them in a struggle made primarily to entertain and continue an ideal universe while not necessarily paying attention to the needs of its extraterrestrial creatures.
Prey, we remember, is a prequel to Predator, being set 300 years before the parent film of the franchise. We are in the Comanche Nation, and it is the story of a young woman named Naru, a fierce and extremely skilled warrior. Raised in the shadow of some of the most legendary hunters who roam the Great Plains, Naru intends to protect her people when danger threatens her encampment. The prey she pursues, and which she finally confronts, turns out to be a highly evolved alien predator with a technologically advanced arsenal: the result is a ferocious and terrifying showdown between the two adversaries.
Prey Movie Review: The Story
The work is entrusted to director Dan Trachtenberg, working in 2016 on the perfectly successful 10 Cloverfield Lane, which also belongs to a film series. A youthful and dynamic direction that of a filmmaker who, with the screenplay written by Patrick Aison, was able to transport history and spectators in 1719 to a reserve belonging to the Native Americans in which to re-determine the rules that belonged to the Predator in the Eighties. An almost slavish yet intrinsically distant reinterpretation that sees the conjunction of the old and the contemporary in the film in the Hulu and Disney+ catalog of August 2022.
A combination that combines tradition with novelty, telling one of the most classic stories ever. It is the rite of passage from youth to adulthood that is crossed by the protagonist Naru (Amber Midthunder) in Prey. A girl waiting for her first hunt to prove to herself and her community that she can be more than what others want to relegate her to. An acute young woman, able to follow any type of trail and strive to carry out the most disparate ambushes. A protagonist who embodies the spirit of the most canonical tales, linked to the formation and circularity of a narrative that will see how the girl is ready to grow and learn from all the stimuli, falls and mistakes undertaken during her initiatory clash with the “Prey“ arrive prepared to watch the movie by retrieving the extended trailer for Prey.
Prey Movie Review and Analysis
While joining a double lap with the standard imposed by the Predator with Schwarzenegger, Prey adopts a very interesting paradigm shift that bases the assumptions of its history on who is chasing and who is being chased. If being “predators” has always been emblematic of the aliens and humans of the saga (let’s think about how Predators is precisely the inverse proposal of the original film, in which humans are considered the worst predators on the piazza), Trachtenberg’s work overturns this vision in a continuous rebound of the status of the characters. In Prey, the protagonist is herself prey and predator, the one she is being hunted and she is becoming a hunter.
In the disadvantaged position in which she is first bound, she is not supported by her peers in her community and is forced to shelter from the uncontrolled fury of the “thunderbird”, the girl will begin the film to use her knowledge to move from one uncomfortable situation to another one of dominance. It is she who follows her footprints, it is she who sets traps and waits to be able to face the unknown being who has fallen into her land, far more dangerous than any lion or bear. It is she who exploits skill and ingenuity by combining her notions of herbs and healing plants to save her skin and that of her friends, while aware that she can finally be recognized as a hunter in the eyes of the group she approaches without any fear towards the body fight in combat with the alien.
The combination of a textbook-style narrative combined with the modernity of visual effects and action stimuli makes Prey one of the best products of a franchise that seems to have found its definitive key in simplicity. The one that unites Predator to the film on Disney Plus. The location, the power of the protagonists and their motivations drive in both cases the works that bring them to the same level as their strength, thrilling the viewer who, outside the screen, perceives them as danger and exhaustion. A film from the Predator saga without excesses or superstructures. A linear story for an admirable protagonist, made of blockbuster material and great cinema.
Despite not being a big-budget movie, Predator: The Prey has taken special care when it comes to setting the story: to do so, it has sought to represent the Comanches as part of the indigenous peoples as faithfully as possible. The film features a Comanche producer (Myers), and a cast made up almost entirely of Native American and First Nations talent including Amber Midthunder (Roswell, New Mexico), newcomer Dakota Beavers, Stormee Kipp (Sooyii), Michelle Thrush (The Journey Home) and Julian Black Antelope (Tribal).
The film also stars the portly Dane DiLiegro (American Horror Story) as the Yautja. Where it slips a bit is with the depiction of European trappers. Not so much because their behavior does not conform to what is expected (get skins and trophies at all costs) but because they are the “bad fools” of the film or, in other words, expendable cannon fodder. What is clear is that the time frame provides a golden opportunity to thread the customs of the Predators with those of humans.
It shocks us to think of them ripping out the skulls and spines of their victims, but we have a lot to think about the fact that we humans ourselves brought buffalo to near extinction by letting their meat rot in the sun or the treatment we give to other ethnic groups for the simple fact of being different from us. The reflection has all the expansive wave that we want to give it because the environmentalist message is almost a cry: we are also charging the planet by artificially increasing its temperature, breaking up entire ecosystems and collapsing populations of living beings that we have not even come to catalog. Ergo, we are not so different from the Yautjas.
In general, apart from the accessory characters, the only big drawback that can be put on Predator: the prey is that it is very predictable. A somewhat more powerful soundtrack would not have hurt either, but what is unquestionable is that it is a film with heart and ambition in which the contrast between the opponents and the originality of the setting are in its favor to create a different experience and more realistic than usual. The wait has not only been worth it but also opens the spectrum of this franchise beyond the science fiction conventions in which it was encapsulated to search for new stories in which we feel more involved. In other words, it still has the potential to surprise.
Prey Movie Review: The Last Words
Prey, a prequel to the Predator saga set in the 1700s, is the best product of the film franchise since its 1987 pioneer with Arnold Schwarzenegger. The story takes from classicism and places it on the essence of action films. The protagonist must face a rite of passage that will make her from prey to predator. The key in which to reading the new Prey is in overturning, becoming passionate about the entertaining side of her and the ease of her story. Did you think that a different film about the Yautjas could not be made? Predator: The prey, just goes to show the opposite: there is room for maneuver to work on different ideas and scenarios, and it works! The setting, the action sequences and the ideas around what it means to be a hunter or Prey.
