Sorry, but the Predator wasn’t an alien. It was a monster with more or less a gimmick—a semi-invisibility cloak—and a half-scary, half-goofy look, like RoboCop with an Alien face and Whoopi Goldberg braids. You can pretty much gauge how inventive (or not) this franchise is just by listing its titles: “Predator,” “Predator 2,” “Predators,” and “The Predator.” And I haven’t even mentioned the super-gentle spinoff series ‘Freddy vs. Jason’ which consisted of ‘Alien vs. Predator’ and its over-the-top sequel, ‘Aliens vs. give the Predator himself a requiem. Now, in an act of recycling you might think of as Hollywood composting, Predator is back—in a film set in the Comanche Nation in 1719, where Naru (Amber Midthunder), a fiery young woman who’s managed to prove herself a hunter, stands against the male leaders of her tribe to rid the Northern Great Plains of a malevolent ghostly visitor. The cast in “Prey” is comprised almost entirely of Native and First Nation talent, marking the film as a step forward in Indigenous casting. Visually, the film is all vivid green forests, mountain views and sunny meadows. For a moment we could almost be watching a Disney historical fable about a coming-of-age warrior as Naru, in black eye-mask paint and fringed skin, trains herself how to swing a crossbow and throw a tomahawk . She has an adversarial relationship with her brother, Taabe (Dakota Beavers), which plays out over the course of the film. “Why do you want to hunt?” Naru’s mother asks. “Because you all think I can’t!” comes the 18th century girl’s response. But when Naru, who occasionally suggests Cherokee warrior Nanye-hi played by Olivia Rodrigo, looks up to see a fiery spaceship, it’s clear she’ll need all her training and more. There isn’t much mystery left about the Predator, who has been revealed in too many sequels too many times. But “Prey,” trying to introduce the creature to a new generation (the one played by Dane DiLiegro), spends the game dealing with its semi-invisible nature as a kind of stripper. In the pristine wilderness of ‘Prey’, he now looks like a masked version of Bigfoot. Once again, we’re trying to make out his shape from the translucent camouflage that turns him into shimmering honeycomb glass, with metal fingers that shoot out like Freddy Krueger’s claws. But it would have been monotonous to have him hidden for the entire film, so the Predator gradually becomes visible – which is always a little disappointing, given how randomly anthropomorphic he is. In it, she not only has a metallic thong but also a ripped stomach that looks like she stepped off the cover of Men’s Fitness. We might as well ask ourselves now: Is it racist that this demon has dreadlocks? The rips and cuts, first of animals and then of people, arrive immediately, and are brutal enough to have earned the film an R rating. As an alien attack thriller, “Prey” is competent and well-paced, albeit with minimal surprise. But Naru’s journey lends it a semblance of emotional coherence that most of the “Predator” films lacked. She is the first to realize that the wildlife she is watching is being watched by something else. This is a grizzly-bear-eat-dog-eat-rabbit movie in which the Predator sits at the top of the food chain. And Naru, beneath her innocent surface, turns out not only to be the most evil in the clan, but the only one who perceives the danger. It’s a famous Hollywood quote, attributed to both Samuel Goldwyn and Jack Warner, that “if you want to send a message, use Western Union.” This line is a testament to the vulgarity of the old studio moguls (many great movies have messages), yet there is a certain stubborn truth to it. And when you watch “Prey,” a routine if visually atmospheric monster morph into a fable of “moral” inspiration, you realize just how common it is for a movie to telegraph these days. By the time Naru stands facing the Predator in head-to-head combat, covered in the creature’s fluorescent green blood, it’s clear that even a “Predator” movie can now be framed as a lesson in how to be. But perhaps, in the case of this franchise, that marks a slight improvement over films that didn’t want to be anything other than what’s come before.
