Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Dan Trachtenberg
Starring: Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers, Dane DiLiegro, Stormee Kipp, Michelle
Thrush, Julian Black Antelope
I've always appreciated John McTiernan's Predator as an
action movie, but much like James Cameron's Aliens, it never quite worked as a horror flick. In Ridley Scott's
Alien, the heroes are an out of depth bunch of space truckers, which makes
you fear for their safety in a way you don't for the space commandos of
Cameron's jacked up sequel. Similarly, in Predator the
protagonists are a crew of meathead mercenaries, some of whom are so
'roided up they even dwarf Arnie. Seeing a bodybuilder face off against
a predator just doesn't have the same impact as a babysitter fighting
Michael Myers. I've always felt a more effective version of
Predator would have made Anna, the native girl played by
Elpidia Carrillo, the protagonist, swapping out an action hero for a
final girl.
With his Predator prequel, Prey, director Dan Trachtenberg takes the franchise back to
something approaching horror and gives us that native final girl. Here
the predator is pitted against a teenage girl. Okay, she's not just any
teenage girl. Naru (instant star Amber Midthunder) is a Comanche
wannabe warrior who knows the woods of her Great Plains home inside out
and has mastered the art of making medicines from ingredients provided
by the local fauna. But it's 1719 and her most powerful weapon is a
throwing axe attached to a rope, far from the giant machine guns wielded
by Arnie and his mates.
Naru is frustrated by her tribe's lack of faith in her skills as a
warrior, and so she sets out to prove herself by heading into the woods
with her dog Sarii, hoping to bring back the head of whatever creature
is responsible for killing the wildlife in strange ways. That creature
is of course the alien predator. Like a kid eating his peas first and
saving his burger to savour, the predator has been killing the area's
animals and collecting their skulls before he decides to move onto human
prey. In Naru he faces a formidable foe.
Naru is the best type of final girl, one who is initially out of her
depth but grows through her ordeal, outwitting her enemy through
intellectual ingenuity rather than physical strength. The worst
pseudo-feminist horror movies make the mistake of giving us a heroine
who is a badass from the beginning, missing the point that it's a final
girl's vulnerability that makes us fear for them. By any human metric
Naru is a badass from the off, but not compared to an eight foot tall
invader equipped with the weaponry of a far advanced civilisation. Naru
spends the movie using her brain as she observes her foe (Midthunder
possesses a pair of remarkably expressive eyes) and mentally charts its
weaknesses, whereas those who rush in with physical attacks don’t fare
so well. It's clear that she'll be required to outsmart the alien rather
than outfight it. What a welcome narrative in this era of superheroes
constantly punching their way through their problems!
Eschewing any of the distracting gimmickry that has dogged Hollywood
action filmmaking in recent decades, Trachtenberg stages his action in a
very classical style. There's no ADHD editing or showy slo-mo, just well
constructed set-pieces that never confuse the audience with any messy
geography. We always know where the participants are in relation to one
another, even though one of them is often invisible. We get the sense
that the film has been put together by an observant thinker like its
young lead.
After several sequels that have attempted to expand the Predator lore,
we finally get a successful one that does the opposite. Trachtenberg
takes things back to basics – all you need is a girl and a monster after
all. Prey never gets bogged down in needless "world
building" exposition, and rather than setting up future instalments it
happily focusses on the movie at hand. It reminds us throughout that
this franchise has its roots in The Most Dangerous Game, and it pulls from the most successful imitators of that 1930s
classic, with moments inspired by the likes of
Deliverance, The Naked Prey and
Southern Comfort. But in presenting us with a Native-American hero in a manner that
never feels like it's trying to score political brownie points, it's a
unique creation.
