Prey

Release Date: August 5, 2022

Watch Date: April 8, 2023

 

    I hate horror movies. This is an established fact. Hate them. Least favorite genre of movie on the planet, would rather watch pretty much anything else. Bob loves them. Loves them. Adores them. Can’t get enough of them. Watches them all October, and would watch more of them more often if I could tolerate it.

    So it is frankly amazing how much I love this film.

    Now, one could argue, and Bob would, that this is not a horror film. It’s a gore filled thrilled, sure. There’s danger of death and a lot of gross scenes, but it is not technically a horror film. Which…fine. Maybe it’s not. But the Predator franchise feels so close to the horror genre anyways, constantly being paired with the Alien franchise that I think it should be an honorary member of the horror genre.

    The point is that I really, really like this movie and by all of my own personal standards I shouldn’t, and I definitely shouldn’t like it enough to pick it as one of my first movies of “Birthday Month”. But we live in this timeline, and I do and I did.

    This movie is shot brilliantly. It’s acted brilliantly. There are long scenes of silence, punctuated by intense moments of fighting. Both Naru and the Predator are out to prove themselves in some way, one by gathering trophies, the other by killing a dangerous creature. If you’re going to set out to kill something dangerous, the Predator is probably top of that list.

    The depiction of the Indigenous tribe is beautiful, and the creators gave an honest attempt to make the way of life, the rituals of the tribe, all of, it as accurate as possible for the time period. The actors all speak the correct language. They are shown to be fierce, and proud, but also fallible. The entire movie was dubbed in an Indigenous language, the first of it’s kind. And look, maybe my standards are low because Bob and I have played ‘spot the racism’ – a game in which we point out blatantly obvious stereotypes – for so long and for so many early Disney movies, that even putting in the bare minimum amount of effort looks amazing. But if a movie in the Predator franchise can put in this level of effort and care in to how they show an entire group of people, than literally no other film that features an Indigenous tribe has any excuse not to do the exact same thing.

    By far the best part of this movie, in my humble opinion, is Naru’s relationship with her brother. It’s sibling rivalry, and love, at it’s finest. I doubt that very many people who have a healthy relationship with their sibling would be unable to relate to the way these two play off of each other, challenging one another, insulting one another, but ultimately caring for and striving to protect each other. It’s a deep, honest, reflection of the complexities of one aspect of familial love and I’m all for it.

    There is a lot of gore, a lot, and you need to be comfortable with that or, like me, able to look past it to see the other beautiful things that this film does. Of course, because it is part of the Predator franchise, if you turn this film on you’re probably anticipating the gore, so my warning is probably unnecessary.

    If thrillers or horrors or gore are not usually your thing, I can’t help but say that you should still give this a try. It is a fantastic film that I know got a lot of praise when it first came out, but I am personally not ready to let all of that praise go to the wayside just yet. Because it is just so, so good.