Every Predator Needs His
2022's Prey is not a terrible film and improves proportionally to how little you take it seriously. The trailers and the director in interviews want you to think this is an important and monumental step for humanity. But it's a silly monster movie with an actress in the lead who's more beautiful than she is skilled. Like a lot of perfectly decent monster movies.
We're not usually expected to believe that the Final Girl is a martial arts genius. Prey has very generous helpings of very obvious cgi and stunt performances in the name of convincing us that Amber Midthunder is a badass and it doesn't work even for a moment.
Obviously I'm going in comparing her to Arnold Schwarzenegger, which would seem natural even if I hadn't watched Predator last week. One reason Schwarzenegger was such a great action star was he was so fucking muscular, obviously, but he also had decent reflexes, which I'd say is more crucial for an action star. Amber Midthunder has neither of these things. She plods through the forest like a modern day teenager randomly plucked from an L.A. mall.
I kept wondering why her hair isn't braided like the other hunters since it was constantly getting in her face. But I realised it's because a) it's sexy and b) it's easier to hide the stunt performers. More and more things pile up against the film's vaunted authenticity. Midthunder isn't even of full Native American heritage, her mother was East Asian. And Midthunder looks it. And the screenplay doesn't do her any favours.
You can tell this was written by simps. I know because when I was a teenage simp I used to write like this. I'd create some douchey guy you're obviously supposed to hate and a beautiful, hyper-skilled girl who puts him down. I'd show the story to a female friend and she'd innocently tell me how much she likes the guy. In retrospect, of course, it makes sense. And in Prey, all these douchey guys in the Comanche tribe we're supposed to hate for standing in her way come off much better than she does. She never has a kind word for any of them, not even her own brother (played by the scene stealing Dakota Beavers), who actually seems to do more damage to the Predator than she does. Midthunder's character ends up coming off as an ungrateful snot.
I really like the Predator's design in this film, though.
It's very different without deviating too much from the original. Some of the action scenes are well put together though an over-reliance on cgi diminishes the impact a lot. Some of the strategies Naru, Midthunder's character, employs in the last act make absolutely no sense unless she can read the Predator's mind. The first film's idea that Arnold Schwarzenegger could hide himself with cold mud is silly but the rest of the film is so good that it works. Naru takes a magic Comanche drug that lowers her body temperature and suffers no ill-effects in the action scenes. I'd say that's a bridge too far.
Prey is available on Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ elsewhere.