Prey director Dan Trachtenberg returns with Predator: Badlands – a mash-up of action adventure and buddy comedy. Our review: The entire Predator franchise was in something of a death spiral in the late 2000s and 2010s, following the poorly-received mash-up Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem and Shane Black’s weirdly misguided 2018 reboot, The Predator, which felt ... Predator: Badlands review | A sequel to dismember
Prey director Dan Trachtenberg returns with Predator: Badlands – a mash-up of action adventure and buddy comedy. Our review:
The entire Predator franchise was in something of a death spiral in the late 2000s and 2010s, following the poorly-received mash-up Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem and Shane Black’s weirdly misguided 2018 reboot, The Predator, which felt as much like a Flight Of The Navigator remake as it did a return to 1987’s goriest action movie.
Full credit to writer-director Dan Trachtenberg, then, for righting the (space) ship with the boldly stripped-back Prey in 2022 – a period piece which pitted the titular alien big game hunter against a Native American tribe in the 18th century. The critical and fan success of that film – which never saw the inside of a cinema – must have granted Trachtenberg even more creative latitude, since Predator: Badlands goes out on even more of a (severed) limb.
If the lack of English dialogue (and abundance of subtitles) seemed like a bold move for a mainstream Hollywood action thriller, then this spin-off’s lack of human characters is arguably another risk. Its protagonist is Dek (Dimitrius Koloamatangi), a teenage Predator – or Yautja, to give his species its proper name – forced out of his tribe and exiled to a horror planet filled with deadly fauna and flora. To restore his reputation, Dek must find and kill the planet’s apex predator or die in the attempt.
Alone and stripped of his weapons, Dek encounters a badly damaged Weyland-Yutani synthetic named Thea (Elle Fanning) – part of a corporate research group scouring the planet for animal samples. In a case of Alien franchise history repeating itself, Thea’s lost her legs and the lower part of her torso; but her expertise makes her useful to Dek, and so the two make odd bedfellows as they battle their way through forests and deadly thickets in search of their respective goals. Dek wants the monster’s head; Thea wants her legs back – and to be reunited with her twin synthetic ‘sister’, Tessa (also Fanning).
As you might expect from a Predator movie, Dek has his high-tech weapons, including explosive spinning blades and extending spears. But what Badlands more closely resembles is a pulp fantasy along the lines of Robert E Howard’s Conan, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan, mashed up with a western like True Grit. For much of the story, Dek’s the gruff, stoic hero whose macho defenses are slowly melted by his sidekick’s warmth. (The irony being that, among his own kind, Dek’s the runt of the litter.)
Fanning is terrific as Thea – a chirpily upbeat synthetic who contrasts with Koloamatangi’s terse, stoic performance as Dek. The latter is quite a feat all around – a mix of physical acting, make-up and singularly convincing digital effects. Where previous Predator films only showed the title character for a few scant scenes – usually between showers of blood – here, we get to study Dek up close. Potentially in IMAX. For scene after scene. The film could easily have stumbled disastrously here.
Instead, Trachtenberg pulls off the tricky task of turning a Predator (sorry, Yautja) into a protagonist without compromising the ruthlessness that audiences might expect. Fan mileage may vary, however, in a certain creature that Thea and Dek encounter on their journey; for a while, this writer kept thinking about Blorp, the monkey-like creature from the 1998 Lost In Space movie. All I can say is: give the critter a chance. It’ll grow on you. Maybe?
Read more: What went wrong with The Predator?
Also in the negative column, Predator: Badlands doesn’t contain much in the way of suspense; the action sequences are imaginatively staged and shot with clarity, but they often resemble the boss battles in videogames, with our heroes wearing down an enemy’s health bar, only for the music to shift down an octave and the health bar to fill up again.
There’s also a somewhat muddled theme in here about families and what we inherit from them. Thea and Tessa have been taught by their de facto parents, the Wey-Yu corporation, to mercilessly exploit the planet they’re researching. Dek and his brother, who we briefly see at the start of the movie, have been taught that aggression and ruthlessness trump all other emotions. Through the course of the story, we’re told that protectiveness and empathy are better than brutality; but then the film goes back to the dismemberment and decapitations – of which there are a lot for a 12A film. Having white and green blood rather than crimson clearly has a lot of sway with ratings boards.
Predator: Badlands is, put more simply, a weird film. But that weirdness is actually its strength; not all franchise devotees will be on board with some of Trachtenberg’s ideas, but there’s a charm to its mix of sincere character stuff and limb-ripping action. Unlike the earlier Alien and Predator team-up movies, Badlands doesn’t overstuff its frame with easter eggs or distracting hooks for future sequels, either.
This is, warts and all, its own movie – one that plays around in two decades-old sci-fi worlds with both affection and cheerful abandon.
Predator: Badlands is in UK cinemas from the 7th November.
