PREY (2022)

Studio:     Hulu/20th Century Studios
Director:    Dan Trachtenberg
Writer:     Patrick Aison, Dan Trachtenberg
Producer:  John Davis, Jhane Myers, Marty Ewing
Stars:     Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers, Michelle Thrush, Stormee Kipp, Julian Black Antelope, Dane DiLiegro

Review Score:

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Summary:

In 1719, a young Comanche woman seeks to prove her prowess to her tribe by hunting a deadly predator from another world.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

On the Northern Great Plains in September of 1719, marginalized young Comanche woman Naru sees a spacecraft descending from the clouds while practicing tomahawk skills in a forest with her dog. Naru tells her respected brother Taabe that she believes the sky gave a sign that the time has come to prove herself as a hunter, even though the tribe dismisses her because she is a woman.

Naru practices making healing poultices with medicine woman Aruka. Aruka questions why Naru wants to hunt when her expected place is to remain at camp. Naru explains that it is because everyone thinks she isn’t capable or courageous.

Taabe leads several tribesmen in a search for their missing member Puhi. Naru joins the search party uninvited. The searchers find Puhi severely injured, and Naru treats his wounds. Strange signs lead Naru to conclude that an unprecedented creature attacked Puhi, but the men assume it was a lion. Taabe stays behind to hunt while Naru is forced to join the men escorting Puhi back to camp on a makeshift stretcher.

Naru’s suspicions about the Predator are confirmed when she finds unusual tracks along with a skinned snake. Naru goes back to warn her brother. Paaka is sent to accompany her.

Naru finds her brother and tells him about the creature. Taabe confirms this might be her hunting opportunity after all.

A lion kills Paaka while he is in the midst of taunting Naru about wanting to be a hunter. The lion then stalks Naru across the branches of a tree. Distracted by Predator noises in the distance, Naru falls to the ground and is knocked unconscious.

Naru wakes back in Aruka’s tent to learn that Taabe carried her home, but Puhi survived because of Naru’s medicine. Taabe returns to camp with the lion’s decapitated head. The tribe celebrates Taabe as their new War Chief, which troubles Naru. Naru tells Taabe there is still another creature out there in the forest, but Taabe downplays her concern.

Naru sneaks away from camp the next day to hunt the Predator on her own. While the Predator hunts a wolf hunting a rabbit, Naru becomes trapped in quicksand. Naru saves herself by throwing a tomahawk attached to a rope and pulling herself free.

Naru and her dog have a frightening encounter with a bear. From a hiding spot, Naru watches the Predator defeat the bear in combat. Although the Predator disguises itself with an invisibility cloak, Naru sees its shape when the creature hoists the bear’s carcass above its head and blood pours down its body.

Four tribesmen sent to find her forcibly capture Naru. Naru tries warning them about the creature to no avail. After observing their group from the trees, the Predator brutally slaughters all four men. Naru escapes, but she is captured by a group of French fur trappers.

From her cage in the trapper camp, Naru sees Taabe and her dog were also taken captive. One of the trappers tries asking Naru what she knows about the creature. Naru and Taabe are then tied to a tree to be used as bait for the Predator.

The Predator viciously kills most of the trappers. Naru realizes the Predator doesn’t want the siblings because they are immobile and she is not considered a formidable threat. As the slaughter continues, Taabe motivates Naru’s confidence in herself before the siblings ultimately escape their restraints.

While Taabe recovers an escaped horse, Naru returns to the trapper campsite to rescue her dog. Naru kills two of the trappers in combat. An injured trapper, Raphael, offers Naru his pistol in exchange for medical treatment. Naru administers an orange flower she harvested for Aruka earlier.

Naru hides and Raphael plays dead when the Predator comes to the camp. Naru realizes the orange flower made Raphael invisible to the Predator’s heat signature sensor. The Predator still kills Raphael. Taabe arrives on horseback to battle the Predator with spears and a bow. Before Naru can ready her pistol, the Predator enables its camouflage cloak and vanishes.

Taabe realizes the Predator is going to kill him. Taabe motivates Naru with his last words before the Predator attacks. Taabe dies. Naru gets away.

Naru captures the bearded trapper who previously captured her brother. Naru eats the orange flower to become invisible to the heat sensor and uses the chained trapper to bait the Predator. When the Predator attacks the trapper, Naru shoots it in the head and dislodges its mask.

Having discovered that the Predator’s mask features a laser targeting system that auto-aims projectiles, Naru positions the mask between two rocks. Naru and the Predator then engage in a fierce battle. When the Predator becomes trapped in quicksand, Naru tricks it into firing its wrist projectiles at her. The mask’s targeting system takes aim at the Predator. The redirected projectiles subsequently kill the Predator.

Naru is celebrated as her tribe’s new War Chief after she returns to camp with the Predator’s severed head. Presenting Raphael’s pistol to the chief, Naru warns that they have to move camp due to a new invasive threat.

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Review:

It really wasn’t until subsequent films established David Fincher as a bona fide auteur that people retroactively reevaluated “Alien 3” and finally, rightly, decided that the often-abused sequel was in fact “good, actually.” Even before that though, I still insisted “Alien 3” was a sharper, scarier movie than James Cameron’s uber-popular “Aliens.” After “Aliens” went whole hog on the ‘80s excess of big guns, bigger explosions, and bombastic battles where Ripley wore a forklift like some kind of Constructicon straight out of Transformers, it was refreshing to see things scaled down to the simplicity of scrappy prison inmates fighting with torches and tools while relying on resourcefulness rather than absurdly-sized weapons. “Alien 3” was far less focused on sci-fi spectacle and more homed in on classic claustrophobic terror.

“Prey” takes a similar approach to recalibrating a “Predator” franchise that’s gone in all kinds of different directions and the smart strategy pays off with the property’s most consistently exciting entry since the first film. “Prey” raises the stakes by making them small again without ever sacrificing intensity. Gone is the gusto of muscular platoons, bullet-blasting machine guns, hi-tech bombs, and futuristic tactical devices. In are bows, ropes, spears, and hand-sharpened blades. “Prey” gets back to the basics of what “Predator” did so well by pitting two warriors against each other in a main event matchup built on nothing more complex than straightforward stalking, suspense, survival, and slaughter. Forget all the noise. May the best hunter win.

Although it’s set in 1719, “Prey’s” plot operates around a timely, yet unfortunately timeless, theme of a young woman struggling to prove her courage amidst the overbearing obstacle of misogynistic marginalization. Naru’s Comanche tribe thinks she belongs in a tent mixing poultices and cooking game with other women while the men hunt and gather. Her brother Taabe, recently promoted to War Chief, offers some encouragement, but even he isn’t sure she’s fully capable of taking her tracking and tomahawk skills into the wild just yet.

As easily characterized as Naru might be, Amber Midthunder handles her portrayal with thoughtful precision. We’ve seen slighted women fighting to be recognized in plenty of stories before, yet Midthunder avoids employing any of the usual traits that might make this archetype off-putting. Naru doesn’t pout with sullen expressions. She doesn’t fold her arms and harrumph like an entitled teenager. “Prey” starts by showing her abilities in action, so she’s already assured us of what she can do. Naru doesn’t lack much confidence in herself either, so she’s mostly waiting for thick-headed tribesmen to catch on to what she already knows without being annoyingly whiny about it.

Naru’s short arc is all the motivation the movie needs to put just enough context behind the carnage. Once the Predator’s arrival on the Great Plains stirs up a little havoc before offering Naru her long-desired opportunity to showcase her fierceness, “Prey” becomes a no muss, no fuss epic of hunting, tracking, attacking, and action in untamed wilderness, much the way a “Predator” movie should be.

If there’s any complaint to be had, maybe the Predator isn’t onscreen enough for everyone’s liking. The Predator often remains camouflaged in its invisibility cloak too, and hunts various woodland animals as well.

Yet this affords excellent opportunities for unexpected combat scenarios and creative staging. One impressively inventive shot features the invisible predator proving its power by hoisting a bear carcass above its head while blood pours down in a waterfall that reveals the creature’s shape to Naru. And even when we’re watching a wolf stalk a rabbit, and then the Predator stalking that wolf, authenticity emanates from how organically these natural settings and ordinary animals are incorporated into what would otherwise be an extraordinary fantasy. It’s like watching a taboo episode of a National Geographic program, and it feels almost scandalous to witness the Predator and these predators in such raw, primal states.

It’s funnily fitting that “Prey” debuted on Hulu during the same week that Warner Bros. executive David Zaslav made waves by canning a number of nearly-finished films including “Batgirl” under the pretense that movies made for streaming diminish the value of big brands. Someone ought to tell Zaslav to look at “Prey” as proof positive that movies on a smaller screen don’t have to be synonymous with small scope and smaller entertainment value. “Prey” roars much louder than its theatrical peers, and confidently returns “Predator” to its roots with a crowd-pleasing concept that’s awesomely engaging.

Review Score: 85

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