Prey (2022) Director: Dan Trachtenberg
“A long time ago, it is said, a monster came here.”
An intense primal thriller, Prey returns audiences to the elemental terror of the original Predator movie (in contrast to the clownish caricature as portrayed in 2018’s The Predator). In Prey, the advanced heat-seeking alien technology of the Predator is contrasted with the crude arrows and axes used by an indigenous tribe. A prequel of sorts, Prey is set on the Great Plains among a Comanche tribe –in contrast to the lush jungle of the original film– as a young Comanche woman named Naru (Amber Midthunder) yearns to be a hunter alongside the men in her tribe. An intelligent woman, she quickly realizes that something much larger than a bear is lurking the forest –but no one will listen to her.
Until, the Predator begins wreaking havoc. A snake is skinned, a bear is slaughtered, and a pack of buffalo are left to rot in the sun. In order to prove herself, Naru hunts for this mysterious creature but then it begins killing off all the warriors in her tribe one by one. Then she stumbles upon a band of arrogant, swinish French trappers who kidnap Naru and her brother to be used as bait for the Predator. Needless to say, chaos ensues with all the characters being killed –for some reason the Predator does not perceive Naru as a threat? Naru realizes this fact and outsmarts the creature, ultimately killing it in the end using its own technology against him. Neither the Predator, nor the Frenchmen, nor the men in her tribe perceived Naru as a threat –and that is why she is so dangerous.
Rife with contemporary feminist and anti-colonialist subtext, Prey presents a disruption to the natural predator-prey hierarchy as, in the end, brains wins out over brawn. Of course, that’s not to say Prey isn’t a harrowing film –on the contrary, this is a tense and utterly brutal gore fest. But one of the best things about this movie is that it is simple and concise –and yet it connects to the rest of the series by explaining the origin of the mysterious pistol handed over at the end of Predator 2. It comes as no surprise that there is not a tremendous amount of depth to Prey, but it is still the best Predator movie since the original in my view.
I still haven’t seen Prey yet. But reviews like yours are helpful in whether or not I decide to. Thank you.