Prey Is the Best Predator Movie Since, Well, Predator

And a model for how the franchise should move forward

Amber Midthunder in Prey

It’s kind of remarkable, when you think about it, how many decades-old franchises haven’t produced a good movie in decades. Terminator, Jurassic Park, Ghostbusters — all terrible, all still around in one form or another. Until this past weekend, you might have added Predator to that list. 2018’s The Predator was abysmal, which was only surprising because Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Nice Guys helmer Shane Black (who was literally in the original movie) directed it, and though 2010’s Predators was actually decent I’m fairly confident you didn’t know it existed until reading this sentence. All of which is a long way of saying that Prey, a prequel set in the Comanche Nation circa the early 1700s, is the best Predator movie since, well, Predator. It’s been a long 35 years — or at least I assume it has, having only been alive for 34 of them — but I daresay that “if it bleeds, we can kill it” diehards will consider Dan Trachtenberg’s prequel as worth the wait as I did.

It’s also a formula for how the franchise should move forward. To hell with sequels; give us more prequels set in notable historical periods — I want a samurai Predator, a Roman Colosseum Predator, and a medieval Predator. Whoever stars in those hypothetical follow-ups will have big shoes to fill, and I don’t just mean Arnold’s. Amber Midthunder — who was blessed with not only talent but also one of the coolest last names imaginable — stars as Naru, a young healer who’d rather be a hunter; she’s the series’ best protagonist since Dutch, something she manages even without a line as memorable as “Get to the choppa!” For as much as it deserved a theatrical release, though, one suspects that Prey being a straight-to-Hulu endeavor (and a highly successful one at that) is what allowed the filmmakers to take such a novel approach. (Streaming it at home also allows you to watch it in Comanche with English subtitles, which your humble correspondent highly advises.) Unlike so many other franchises, I now hope this one doesn’t go extinct anytime soon.