First Prey 4K Blu-Ray Review Praises The Film, Picture & Sound

The 4K Blu-Ray release of last year’s excellent Predator prequel Prey is just over a week away. Blu-Ray.com have managed to get the first review out of the release and it’s quite positive. They scored the film itself 4/5, praising Amber Midthunder’s performance as Naru and that the movie reinvents the Predator franchise. The 4K picture quality was scored 5/5 with its amazing landscapes and the CGI still holds up in 4K.

Prey is presented in 4K UHD courtesy of Disney / Buena Vista and 20th Century Studios with an HEVC / H.265 encoded 2160p transfer in 2.39:1. Captured with Arri Alexa cameras and finished at 4K, this is the “exception” to my self recreated “rule” that Arri captures don’t always offer the crispness and palette nuance of some other cameras.

This film is full of some absolutely jaw dropping scenes of wild vistas, and depth of field in this 4K UHD version only improves on already excellent levels seen in the 1080 version. Detail levels are noticeably improved from (again already excellent) 1080 levels across the board, including everything from practical items like props and costumes to even some of the CGI, where the semi-opaque Predator’s weird scaliness has new precision in this version.

It’s a little surprising to hear in the commentary track how much imagery was actually composited, because even the 4K UHD version doesn’t really give away any of the computer aided “seams”, so to speak, resulting in a really ingenious looking presentation especially when the Predator starts taking out actual humans. The palette also attains some new luster courtesy of HDR, and any hints of what I’ve often called “Alexa murk”, especially in a couple of scenes pretty heavily graded toward yellows, are actually mitigated here. Some of the deeper blue tones in particular have real resonance and nuance in this version which they don’t quite display in the 1080 version.

Naru & Sarii

Equally, the Dolby Atmos track was scored 5/5 while the DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track on the 1080p versions was scored the same. Blu-Ray.com says there isn’t a whole lot of difference between the two tracks but they still are outstanding tracks with plenty of detail.

Prey features a nicely immersive Dolby Atmos track, though as with some other recent releases from Disney I’ve reviewed, I frankly wouldn’t want to argue that there’s a huge difference between this track and the DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track included on Disney’s 1080 release. Yes, you can definitely hear discrete emanations from the Atmos speakers, noticeably when that nasty Predator is traipsing about and making his bizarre clicking sounds, but without implying any deficits here, otherwise things sound largely the same.

There’s still really solid engagement of all of the surround channels for the glut of ambient environmental effects, and the evocative score also wafts through the side and rear channels regularly. Dialogue (some of which is in Comanche with forced subtitles) is always rendered cleanly and clearly. Speaking of Comanche, this actually offers a Comanche Dolby Digital 5.1 dub which is really interesting to at least sample. Optional English, French and Spanish subtitles are available.

Extras are a bit thin on the ice with the commentary track, short featurette, FYC Panel and some Deleted Scenes. The website scored the extras 2.5/5 and the overall score of the 4K release was a 4/5.

Prey comes out on 4K Blu-Ray on October 4th in North America and you can preorder it on Amazon. Unfortunately, it seems the UK release isn’t coming out until November 27th.