David Bukach/Hulu
Every follow-up to John McTiernan and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1987 Predator has tried to concoct a high-concept twist, be it situating its alien killer in the big city (Predator 2), pitting it against acid-bleeding Xenomorphs (Alien vs. Predator), traveling off-world (Predators) or doing whatever it was that The Predator was attempting. Prey, thankfully, eschews such more-is-better inventiveness, taking a back-to-basics approach to its material and, in doing so, crafts the franchise’s finest follow-up by a significant margin. The hunters are once again also the hunted in Dan Trachtenberg’s stripped-down survival-horror gem, whose sole shortcoming turns out to be its theatrical unavailability—those with a hankering for this human-vs.-extraterrestrial carnage will only find it on Hulu beginning August. 5.
Written by Patrick Aison, Prey goes old-school both in its approach to the series and with its setting. The year is 1719, and in the Comanche Nation in the Great Northern Plains, Naru (Amber Midthunder) yearns to be a warrior. Trachtenberg shoots her in either close-ups that fixate on her intensely driven glare or in low-angled compositions that stress her formidable character. Naru should clearly not be taken lightly, and yet that’s just what she is by her comrades save for her brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers), a fearsome hunter who recognizes his sister’s ability and tells her that the only way she’ll be considered the equal of her male peers is to confirm it in the wild. Fortunately, a lion hunt provides her with just that opportunity, as well as a chance to demonstrate her skill with natural medicines—including, in particular, an orange herb that heals by lowering body temperature.
Midthunder is an arresting big-screen presence, her large eyes and coiled body language imparting everything we need to know about her independent, no-nonsense heroine. The sexist mistreatment that Naru suffers affords a modern undercurrent, but Trachtenberg shrewdly sidesteps any timely commentary that might burden his fleet, ferocious film. That also holds true for a later encounter with a group of nasty French trappers, who function less as vehicles for anti-colonial finger-wagging—though their out-of-their-element ugliness is plain for all to see—than as complicating factors for Midthunder’s protagonist, not to mention fodder for the monster. At every turn, Aison and Trachtenberg favor adrenalized thrills over thematic sermonizing, the result being a lean, mean B-movie that’s been constructed with the formal beauty, cleverness and efficiency of an A-list effort.