So after seeing all these surprising 90 per cent approval ratings on critic aggregator's I felt obliged to weigh in with my own 2 cents.
To begin I should state I watched this movie in two halves, the first 46 mins and then the outstanding 54 mins.
My rating: 6.9 out of 10.
When this movie was first announced I had my doubts, largely because the original concept for the film had nothing to do with Predator. In its very first concept this movie was purely a story revolving around a female Comanche warrior proving her worth amongst her male peers. The addition of a Predator was added slightly later. Though these changes occurred very early in pre production, watching the first 46 minutes it seemed as though these changes were much later with many of the Predator's scene's simply being inserted to accompany the narrative. Yes we do have moments where the Comanche's discover hints of the creature's activity which culminate in the bear scene (this happened to be the climax point of my first half viewing) but for the first half of this film, it is a story purely about Naru and her relationship with the Comanche tribe she belongs to.
My second doubts, I must admit, came with the confirmation of Dan Tractenburg as director. Having watched 10 Cloverfield Lane, I felt it was rather disappointing. Particularly given the hype train built up revolving around 10CL being contained within the Cloverfield franchise. Perhaps much like Prey, 10 Cloverfield Lane was not initially designed as a Cloverfield film. This led me to have doubts on how authentic Tractenburg could bring the Predator into a narrative he had initially constructed separately. Happily though, I felt Tractenburg, by and large, did an alright job with the film. At least he knew the best weapon to fight a predator was to not use a weapon so as to not gain its attention as good game.
So onto the film itself as a whole.
The Story:
As a Predator film this was pretty standard. A group of people get hunted by a Predator. Saying that, simplicity often works wonders and fortunately, Prey was not the awful joke of a film that Shane Black's The Predator ended up being. Naru had an interesting narrative that felt quite natural unlike many modern female led action movies and her relationships with her family and community came across realistically. The attention to authenticity with the indigenous casting is great and adds to the portrayal of the period as you would expect. The story however, much like Rodriguez's Predators follows most of the beats of the original movie only instead of having the action spin that John McTiernan's original had, Prey is fairly tame, with very little actually happening, something that harms it later on. The film also seems to consider itself an origin type prequel which adds further issues to the narrative and its place within the lore. The opening dialogue for the film has Naru actress Amber Midthunder recount a brief story about a monster that visited their tribe years previously and terrorised the community. The Predator of Prey however is depicted killing and observing different species of Earth's animal as though it is trying to determine what the apex of the planet or the region is. This is something that flies in the face of the established history between Yautja and humans which first interacted during the earliest civilisations of human history. Within the context of the Predator universe, Yautja taught the early humans how to construct pyramids, buildings that are already considered ancient by the 1700's.
The discrepancy doesn't end there however, as I'm sure you may be expecting, the flintlock pistol, makes no sense within the confines of the story. The name Raphael Adolini is first established at the end of Predator 2 when the Elder Predator gifts it as a trophy to Lieutenant Mike Harrigan after he successfully kills a Yautja hunting in late 1990's LA. The pistol with its unique inscription informs both Harrigan and viewers that Pred's have been going around hunting humans for a considerable time. This story was then fleshed out in a Dark Horse comic where Raphael Adolini is revealed to be a Spanish pirate captain who encounters a Predator along with his mutinous crew in 1718 (a year before the events of Prey). At the end of the story Adolini gifts the Predator (later revealed as the Elder Predator) his flintlock pistol as a mark of thanks as he dies. Now I've seen some reviews try to explain that away due to it being a comic (which is a valid format for storytelling and highly important within the continuity of the Alien and Predator franchises), but it doesn't really work. In addition to this, the Predator in Prey dies at the end of the movie and Naru retains the pistol which allows no link between the two films either making it a considerable goof on the part of the filmmakers. A further detail is Adolini is a name of Italian origin, but the man who appears to own the pistol is French. Whilst the comic can just about get away with this given the linkage between the Spanish and Italian languages and their interactions, unfortunately for the modern era, the 1700's was not a period where such names are as widespread as they are now. Although America was a colony that mixed many cultures, the likelihood of finding a Frenchmen with an Italian name is like finding a part of the sea made out of diamond. Even today Adolini is not a surname you will find in France.
Now concerning the Predator's intelligence in the movie. I've seen many of your reviews analysing this, and a general consensus suggests that a lot of you see the Predator as dumb because of choices it makes. This isn't necessarily wholly the case as I see it. Given that the story tries very hard to make it appear as if the Predator in Prey is only just discovering humanity, it stands to reason that it wouldn't be as well adjusted as later hunters such as the Jungle Hunter in Guatemala or the City Hunter in LA are to hunting humans. Now, for me, this again falls into the issues surrounding Prey's faithfulness to the Predator franchises established lore. We know that Predators have interacted with humans long before the events of Prey. In fact, Prey even states this in its opening line. Unfortunately this seems to have been changed around in development because, the primal approach to the Predator, which I thought was really interesting, doesn't allow it to act as though there's been any previous encounters. If we look at the scenes where the Predator hunts the snake and wolf, we see quite clearly it is observing them, unsure what will happen. It's puzzling out which prey is the strongest in each of those scenarios. Then, once one animal is victorious, it strikes, seeing the victor as the more worthy game.
This is again thrown up in the air when we are led to believe that the Predator's discovery of Naru is its first interaction with a human, only to later discover that it's already been hunting French fur trappers. The issue with this story is that, despite its good qualities, it can't seem to make up its mind over what it would like to be. You could explain some of this away by saying well, maybe that Predator hasn't interacted with humans before and is unsure, but this also doesn't hold up. Predators and humans have interacted for eons within the established lore, even if this Predator were of a different tribe to the classic Predators we've seen or the bad blood Predators in Rodriguez's film it would still have an understanding of humans, it would still know what humans are, how they act, how they fight. Now I know I've said that I don't fully see it that this Predator as completely dumb in the same way that many of you have said, this apparent unawareness is probably the biggest flaw in this Predator's intelligence. It just doesn't work. The story crafting around it doesn't add up. The Predator in Prey simply cannot be unaware of humans but the story treats this as an origin encounter between Predators and humans. That's where it is massively flawed.
The Characters:
As I've already said I greatly enjoyed the character of Naru, she, to me, feels like a protagonist within the same vein as Ellen Ripley or Sarah Connor and her story is pretty fleshed out in that it forms the basis for the entire film. I also think that her brother is crafted decently and is presented as a nice counterweight to Naru. I even think that her interactions with her mother are well done, but aside from that, very few of the characters are fleshed out or given a good amount of depth. In the original we had Dutch, Dillon, Blaine, Mac, Poncho, Billy, Hawkins, Anna, each of them felt unique and, although not all of them were fleshed out, you did feel there was depth amongst the supporting characters. It's Dutch's story but the friendship of Mac and Blaine form a beating heart for the narrative at times and Dillon's past as a friend of Dutch who has since been twisted and morphed by his CIA bosses, even though we don't see it, add a lot of meat to the pie. In Prey however, outside of Naru and her brother, there's no one really given any depth at all, except maybe Naru's dog. As such, you don't really care when people start dying because you have no connection to them.
The Predator:
In Prey, I've already addressed how the Predator perhaps suffered from story issues so instead I'll focus as much on the other things. The Primal design was something I really liked. The tribal bone type mask was pretty cool if not aesthetically my most favourite. What I did love was the weaponry. Going in I was aware that the production team had gone to great lengths in crafting the Predator's weaponry for this film and it certainly paid off. Though some were adaptions of previously seen armaments such as the combi stick, net gun and spear gun, they were altered to fit a different style and they were all pretty great. The Predator's ferocity in Prey was also pretty cool, we've seen angry Predator's before but there was a strong physicality in the way the Predator was presented, even if not always shown. We see the Pred punch a bear to the ground whilst cloaked and body slam a wolf. It also brutally attacks one of the Comanche warriors in the field with Naru. So there were good elements to this Pred but, like a few things with the film, they were perhaps poorly executed. The face design I also didn't really care for, not really sure what they were going for with it, wasn't all that Predatory. Also the honour system appears to have been thrown out of the window with Naru's brother being impaled by a cloaked Pred who's clearly feeling the heat of a hand to hand engagement. This I sort of put down to the story issues surrounding the franchise established lore though. Finally, of course, there was the Pred's death. Now this really was dumb. How did it not see the tri dots pointing directly at its head? They are so obvious and given how much its moving as it struggles to get itself out of the mud, how does it not glimpse the shine of them, they're lasers after all, you aren't going to not notice a laser shining in your eye. So yeah, it ended in a very dumb way sadly, ironically killing itself in exactly the same way Sterling K Brown killed himself in The Predator which actually worked far better (Yep that's one point in favour of The Predator over Prey - even I'm shocked).
The Gore (or lack thereof):
When you watch a Predator movie, part of the experience is seeing the Predator kill in different ways. You'll always have the staples of course such as impaling or shooting with some implement but occasionally you get more thought out demises for characters, lets not forget Rebellion having its Pred rip a Colonial Marine's spine out through their stomach in AVP (2010), or Wolf's shurikens in AVP:R. This movie however, seems to me as though it was trying to get a 12 (or PG-13) rating. We don't see most of the kills in the film. In fact the only two that really stick out are Naru's brother being impaled by the cloaked Predator and the French trapper screaming after being stood on and getting impaled. There's a couple of other impalements with the Pred's split in two combi stick though none really done in any great detail with the vast majority either happening off screen, with something in shot blocking our view (tree in front of the trapper decapitated by the shield), or positioned far from the camera so it is either blurred out by depth of field or just too far away to show any detail. Though I do think Tractenburg did manage to maintain the suspense to a degree, the fear of showing the Predator kill anyone really let it down. Maybe that could have come from Disney which if so, is quite a major red flag for future instalments.
The CGI:
Lastly onto the worst element, the CGI. This was absolutely awful. Given that many films and even TV shows incorporate CGI into their work, (Young Luke Skywalker, Young Princess Leia and Rogue One Peter Cushing in Star Wars) and for the most part do it fairly effectively. The CGI of this film is blatantly obvious, from the snake to the cougar to the wolf and bear. Even the blood is terrible. I will say the cloaking device looked good (which is quite straight forward to do), but aside from that, it really was some of the worst CGI I've seen in ages. Even more surprising is that the film is bankrolled by Disney and they couldn't afford a better CGI team than that. Honestly, stick to practicals as much as poss, the Pred outfit being practical looked great, but its unmasked face not so much.
Prey isn't a bad film but its not a great film, it certainly isn't the best Pred film since the original. In fact, I struggle to place this above Predators which had incredibly underdeveloped characters. It's not as bad as The Predator of course, but honestly, I think you'd really have to try hard to be worse than that garbage pile. For me the best Pred sequel remains Predator 2, it added so much to the character and the lore, fleshing out the original more. This, like Predators, copies many of the same beats (even recycling two lines from the original which came across incredibly cheesy and didn't fit Prey's narrative at all) but, like Predators, can't compete with the original it is honouring. So really, it comes out as a pretty average film.
