Prey

10 Cloverfield Lane director Dan Trachtenberg co-wrote and directed Prey, a return to the iconic Predator horror series that started in 1987.

(Hint: Besides the obligatory 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. 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. The other members of Naru’s tribe are there to naysay and/or become Predator fodder. He may be out there in the woods, but he isn’t exactly communing with the spirit of Terrence Malick. But when a series of mysterious signs indicates that an unfamiliar creature is stalking their territory, only Naru is willing to hunt it down. 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.

Director Dan Trachtenberg's 'Predator' prequel is an excellent alien thriller anchored by a strong performance from Amber Midthunder.

This slow burn of a start is a killer character introduction, made all the more engrossing thanks to Midthunder. Thanks to a solid amount of bloody violence, Prey earns its R-rating. Yet its fight scenes are more than just gore fests for the sake of gruesome spectacle. As soon as that realization kicks in, so does the main conflict of Prey, pitting an elite hunter against an aspiring one in a showdown to the death. That distance proves to be the film's not-so-secret weapon, because while Prey is clearly a Predator film, it doesn't feel like any iteration of the Predator stories we've seen before. However, Naru is the first person to realize there's a new, dangerous apex predator on the loose. Director Dan Trachtenberg's Predator prequel is a taut thriller that's easily the best addition to the franchise since the original.

Amber Midthunder makes a spectacular action hero in this compelling survival story that just happens to be a 'Predator' prequel.

Prey is barely a Predator movie, which is why it’s the absolute best Predator movie in 35 years. It matters that the film’s narrative, about an undervalued hunter holding her own against an unthinkably challenging foe, works regardless of whether you’ve ever seen a Predator movie. Sure, it’s by default the best Predator movie since the first Predator movie. All due respect to Danny Glover’s over-the-top star turn in Predator 2, I’d argue that Prey is the first Predator sequel/prequel where the main human protagonist is more compelling than the monster. Prey is a generally engaging and often engrossing action-adventure film with a strong lead performance, theater-worthy production values, agreeably R-rated violence and just enough of a connection to the prior Predator films to appease that fandom. The best thing about Daniel Trachtenberg and Patrick Aison’s Prey is that it’s barely a Predator movie.

The best Predator film since the original, Prey delivers a tense, action-packed adventure that feels fresh and unique in the franchise.

Trachtenberg clearly understands that aspect of the first film’s appeal, and puts that knowledge to good use in Prey. That mismatch turns their survival into a battle of wits and strategy instead of a war of technological attrition. In setting the film in 1719, Prey effectively de-powers its human protagonists, stripping them of the high-tech weaponry and armor that turned the franchise into an escalating arms race over the years. Prey filters the terrifying experience of being hunted by a Predator through a new lens with its setting, its protagonists, and its attitude toward the relationship between hunters and the hunted. Unlike nearly all of those films (with the possible exception of 2010’s Predators), Prey takes a different angle on the human-Predator dynamic — one that more closely echoes that of the original film. The cast of Prey is led by Amber Midthunder (Legion) as Naru, a skilled hunter challenging traditional gender roles with her fighting skills and strategic mind.

'Prey' proves to be an apropos title, as Dan Trachtenberg's film is cowed by John McTiernan's original 'Predator.'

This sensibility, common of American action movies of the ‘80s, feels authentically volatile in our skittish modern culture, as contemporary, woefully self-conscious genre offerings can’t hope to capture such anarchy. Of course, she’s right: A relative of the monster that will plague Arnold Schwarzenegger’s mercenary centuries in the future lurks nearby, armed and ready to party. Evil white people pop up to die as grist for the mill and that’s about it, as the tension between the Comanche and the European invaders is, at best, rudimentarily mined. The film is set 300 years in the past, in the Highland Plains of the Comanche nation, with a protagonist, Naru (Amber Midthunder), who has a problem redolent of many a Disney princess. Now, the potential annihilation of Naru’s tribe is an opportunity for her to come of age. So ripe, in fact, that it’s rather astonishing to consider that John McTiernan’s 1987 original is the only Predator that’s worth a damn.

The cast and filmmakers of Prey discuss bringing primal surprise back to the Predator franchise—and making a movie that truly honors its Comanche setting.

Then you saw it decloaked with the biomask on, and you thought, ‘Oh that’s what the Predator is!’ And then it still had yet another look, and that’s something we haven’t gotten from any of the movies since then.” That to me was the most mind-blowing and special part of this experience.” It also added to the film’s visceral return to nature in the Predator mythos. Trachtenberg cites Terrence Malick as a reference for the look of the film. It was also a thrill to make. To achieve that effect onscreen was a learning process for many involved, including the stars. “For me, this is amazing because we always wonder what life was like on the Great Plains back in the 1700s,” Myers beams after entering the Den of Geek studio at San Diego Comic-Con. “So it’s pretty amazing to bring people to see just that. Watch it once in Comanche and once in English.” It is set 300 years ago, before much of the North American continent had been colonized by European settlers, and tells the story of Naru (Amber Midthunder), a young Comanche woman who is a gifted hunter and tracker that wants to break gender norms in her community and prove she is likewise a great warrior. However, unlike recent, stumbling attempts to relaunch the Predator franchise, Prey also succeeds by mirroring a real culture and real world that has long been undervalued onscreen. They were, after all, about to make the first good Predator movie in nearly 40 years—and perhaps more importantly a movie that took Indigenous and First People’s experiences seriously. “I thought about how Native Americans, and specifically Comanche, are so often relegated to playing sidekicks or the villains,” Trachtenberg says, “never the hero.

Prey is a Predator prequel set 300 years in the past — and it's already earning remarkable reviews ahead of its release on Friday.

Predator fans have had to endure a lot of underwhelming and straight-up bad films over the past few decades, but it seems that Prey is the prequel that we truly deserve. As noted, the film will be streaming from Friday (August 5) on Hulu in the U.S., and over in the U.K., it’ll drop on Disney Plus on the same date. Heck, even viewers with no interest in the Predator movies till now might want to give Prey a shot by the sounds of it. This is a franchise high for the Predator series, with only 1987’s Predator on 80% landing anywhere near. The film currently scores a very strong 95% on Rotten Tomatoes (opens in new tab). Prey is scheduled to launch on Hulu on Friday, August 5 and the pre-release signs look extremely promising.

The wide open spaces of Alberta look fantastic, there's plenty of monster mayhem and action, and the striking score by Sarah Schachner deserves to be blasted ...

As it yanks the bear from its pursuit, lifting it up for the kill, the invisible Predator is painted into view by an outpouring of blood. This gives the creature a kindred spirit of sorts in Naru ( Amber Midthunder), a young warrior who wishes to hunt like the males in her tribe, including her brother, Taabe ( Dakota Beavers). Naru is teased by the guys, who state that hunting is men’s work, but we learn she can hold her own in a fight. The Predator’s modus operandi is the same, however: it is a hunter and it’s looking for trophies of prey. “Prey” bills itself as an origin story of the first Predator alien to appear on Earth. This one is fitted with slightly retro versions of the weapons wielded by the late actor Kevin Peter Hall in the first film. Considering the recent cancellations of films scheduled for upcoming release, I suppose I should be thankful that “Prey” can be seen anywhere, including on services to which I do not subscribe. So, why is Disney dumping an entry in the popular “ Predator” series on Hulu in the middle of the summer?

Ctrl Alt Ego is a huge and extraordinary game about playing a non-corporeal intelligence.

This is a wonderful game to just dive into, deliberately opaque at the start, as you learn its systems for yourself. I have managed to break it a couple of times, through some outlandish actions, but the majority of the time I’ve just been delighted to find out my cockamamy plan has worked out. This is all the more interesting for the way you aren’t Bug 22. The game is designed to be experimented with, and techniques that feel like they might break the game have most likely been considered and accounted for. Or you could pick Shift, and have a sort of telekinetic ability to move objects. And it’s a heck of a game.

The world wasn't calling out for yet another Predator movie but 10 Cloverfield Lane's Dan Trachtenberg finds mileage in a light-footed prequel led by Native ...

Said smashing is done with gusto from 25-year-old Midthunder who rises to the challenge of taking on the Predator even if her character’s ascent from unsure warrior-in-training to top-of-the-food-chain action hero is missing a few beats or, dare I say, a training montage. While it really shouldn’t be, it feels genuinely new to see a genre film of this scale centred on an almost entirely Native cast (the only white characters are odious French invaders, natch). It’s worth applauding not because of the mere fact of what it is and what it means but because screenwriter Patrick Aison (a TV pro with credits including Jack Ryan and Wayward Pines), finds a way to make it all seem perfectly seamless, the setting an inventive way to impose a new set of restrictions on a story we’ve seen a few too many times before. But when Naru notices a new kind of predator, one who can’t simply be hunted as a bear or lion would, she finds a way to prove herself and save her people.

By focusing on the stories of the human characters—in a uniquely anachronistic setting—director Dan Trachtenberg rekindles interest in the uneven film ...

This is the shot in the arm that the franchise needed—a confident addition to its timeline, populated with moments that will leave long-time fans grinning and will encourage newcomers to explore the rest of the franchise. Alongside their respect for the Comanche, to whom the film is dedicated (and producer Jhane Meyers is a Comanche and Blackfeet American Indian, ensuring respect and authenticity in its depictions of their culture), there is a giddiness in the filmmaking that suggests that the film was a passion project for all involved. Stunt coordinators Steven McMichael and Jeremy Marinas conjure magic magic with mostly primitive weapons like bows and arrows, hatchets, and swords, giving the fights the kind of brisk pacing and visceral impact that action junkies expect in a post-John Wick film landscape. After Naru’s first confrontation with the Predator, the film continuously escalates and it becomes a gauntlet run of near escapes and propulsive action, depicted in decidedly cool but never larger-than-life terms. Aison establishes what hunting means to the Comanche, defines the roles expected of men and women in their tribe, and spotlights Naru’s competitive relationship with her older brother, Taabe, who’s played with empathy and star-making confidence by newcomer Dakota Beavers. Trachtenberg and cinematographer Jeff Cutter, reteaming from their work on 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016), take great lengths to create a sense of naturalism and beauty, both in the landscape and performances, that leads naturally into the eventual showdown with an alien audiences know is waiting in the brush. With Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey, the long-running Predator franchise finally has an entry that can stand as an equal to the original film, precisely because it narrows its focus on the story elements that matter dramatically, instead of unnecessarily expanding the franchise’s mythology.

In jumping backward in time, Dan Trachtenberg's 'Predator' sequel, 'Prey,' frees itself from having to build out more of the mythology of its mandibled ...

In grounding its story in the experiences of an 18th-century tribe member, the film doesn’t just make a Native woman its protagonist, it presents a scenario, rich with potential, in which a high-tech adversary has to be taken down with arrows, tomahawks, a primitive pistol provided by a French trapper, and bloody determination — well, all those things and a dashing (terrestrial) dog who’s kind of a scene-stealer. Prey, the fifth movie in the Predators series, takes place in 1719 in the Northern Great Plains, and it shucks off all that lore like unnecessary armor to return itself to a lean story of messily aligned humans facing down an advanced alien enemy. In some ways, it’s a return to form that evokes and, less effectively, rebukes the brawny original. Studio movies are so deeply beholden to the familiar at this point that it can seem like we’re trapped in a world of finite ideas that can be continued or remade but never actually replaced with something new. The Predators got a name and warring tribes and dogs, and the best part of the new movie, Prey, is that none of these things actually matter. And Arnold Schwarzenegger, the burliest of them all, played a smirking sentient pectoral muscle with the undeniably badass nickname of “Dutch.” The Predator, a member of an extraterrestrial race devoted to trophy hunting across the galaxy with plasma cannons and cloaking capabilities, felt less like an invention unto itself than a response to all this Reaganite he-manning.

Prey's Rotten Tomatoes score has been revealed, and it's a major win for Hulu's upcoming Predator reboot. You can find out how it compares to the rest of ...

In our review, we concluded by saying, "Prey delivers pure Predator pandemonium, and is the Predator franchise at its best. Prey is debuting on Hulu this Friday, and the hope is streaming numbers will be high enough to warrant a sequel. With a female lead and a unique 1700s setting in The Comanche Nation, the Predator finally feels relevant again.

The “Predator” franchise gets a prequel and the Comanche Nation gets a space invader in this unremarkable adventure.

Yet despite a female-empowerment theme and an adversary fairly bristling with fancy weaponry, “Prey” never builds a head of steam. Taking note of the bloody remains, Naru (Amber Midthunder), a young Comanche woman, and her brother (Dakota Beavers) determine to track the perpetrator. Dropped out of a spaceship in the Northern Great Plains in 1719, the beast proceeds to research the local wildlife.

Amber Midthunder plays a young warrior battling an alien in 'Prey.' (CNN) For those who remember the original "Predator," the ...

Until that climactic showdown, the best thing going for it is Midthunder, whose recent roles include "The Ice Road" When it comes to battling Predators, brains tend to trump brawn. Naru soon gets the test of several lifetimes, recognizing that the alien (played by Dane DiLiegro, a 6'9" former basketball player) isn't an animal but something different, while also learning its strengths, weaknesses and the peculiar game that it plays in terms of who and what it chooses to kill.

Dan Trachtenberg and Jhane Myers explain the streaming debut of 'Predator' film 'Prey' and adding a Native perspective to the franchise.

“I grew up on ‘Predator’ and I like action,” Myers said. A Native artist was recruited to create animations for the end credits, which unfold in the style of traditional Plains hide art. The stripped-down premise naturally lends itself to the hunter-becoming-hunted dynamic of “Predator,” while also carrying a completely new locale and mood for the series. “Prey” thoughtfully shifts the dynamic of “Predator” to the Great Plains, at a time when some Native Americans still live untouched by encroaching colonial forces. “I’ve worked in a lot of television where we’re always boxed in the format we have to work in. The filmmaker first gave his pitch for “Prey” to 20th Century Fox hot off the heels of his 2016 directorial debut, “10 Cloverfield Lane” — a critically beloved, post-apocalyptic potboiler that flipped a modest production budget into a $110 million haul at the global box office.