'The Predator' Movie Review

Released: 12th September 2018 (UK)

Length: 107 Minutes

Certificate: 15

Director: Shane Black

Starring: Boyd Holbrook, Olivia Munn, Trevante Rhodes, Jacob Tremblay, Sterling K. Brown, Keegan Michael-Key, Thomas Jane, Alfie Allen and Brian A. Prince

For all its iconic trappings, The Predator series has made steady runs at the box office in its thirty-year history but has never been given a truly worthy follow-up. Eight years on from the last Predator film and what do we have? Easily the weakest entry in the entire mainline franchise.

Following on from Predator and Predator 2, the Predator follows special forces sniper Quin McKenna (Boyd Holbrook). After escaping an attack by the Predator in Mexico, Mckenna hurriedly sends the valuables from the crash site to his home in Maryland. When his autistic son Rory (Jacob Tremblay) activates Predator technology, a new hunt between Predators and humans begins with multiple players seeking to take control of the situation; this includes a shadowy sect of government researchers led by Will Traeger (Sterling K. Brown), dedicated alien researcher Dr. Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn) and of course the Predator himself, this time played by Brian A. Prince. The plot is all over the place which may be down to reshoots, offering competent action scenes in amongst a whole pile of unnecessary plot threads and filler dialogue. The film is fast-moving and yet it still feels like too much was put into its runtime. There’s a subplot involving Rory being bullied at school, but this is immediately thrown out the window about a quarter of the way through. Rather than working to flesh out the characters, Quinn’s team mostly just sit around and throw crappy quips which rarely get a laugh when they’re not fighting the monster. By contrast, the mystery of the Predators is absent for this outing, as the film sees fit to reveal them in the most basic, straightforward way. The worst offence committed by The Predator though is that there’s no suspense whatsoever; the series has prided itself on using creeping tension as to when the creature will strike next which has been executed to varying degrees of quality through the years. Here, the film is pure action which really ruins any kind of scares it could have had. When it comes down to it, The Predator is sloppy and muddled, an amalgamation of tropes from Black’s previous films that should have been consolidated and streamlined into a more coherent vision.

The characters in The Predator are a real let-down, ranging from average to highly underdeveloped. Boyd Holbrook is merely ok as lead Quinn Mckenna; there’s a light connection to family conveyed but he still pales in comparison to his predecessors. Olivia Munn is serviceable despite her character being given no backstory. Young Rory isn’t badly acted by any means; what baffled me was why he needed to be in a Predator film. The other characters, except for Trevante Rhodes’ Nebraska are drab and uninteresting; each one is a cheap gimmick and little more. The audience learns little to nothing about them and so they sit below every other team in the series. The same holds true for other side characters who are either drafted in to fill a place or barely have anything to do; the most notable instances of this are Sean Keyes (Jake Busey) who brings a flimsy link to Predator 2 and Quinn’s wife Emily (Yvonne Strahovski) who essentially disappears from the narrative after twenty minutes of screen time. The dialogue attempts to capture the macho heaviness of the first film but often comes off as cringe-worthy and while not quite veering into insufferable territory, there still isn’t much to like.

At the very least, the film’s effects and action sequences do hold up. The Predator is well shot and well helmed in terms of special effects. There’s a solid amount of detail in the Predator technology, with some subtle hints as to how the aliens have evolved and progressed their hunting techniques. The action is always clear and easy to follow with plenty of wide shots framing the narrative succinctly. There’s a higher use of CGI this time around and it mostly holds up well though I was underwhelmed by the design of the Predator dogs which when compared with those seen in 2010’s Predators, felt lazily put together. It’s a suitably bloody film with Predator tools inflicting plenty of nasty fatalities throughout. Other areas of the presentation feel half-baked however; the music by Henry Jackman mostly makes use of remixes of Alan Silvestri’s original score with not much in the way of new notes; at points the tracks are also awkwardly placed, often marking the entrance of the human antagonists rather than accompanying the action. The Predator is well-produced, but you’ll find that some aspects do stick out in the presentation.

The Predator should have been a match made in heaven; Shane Black knows the 1987 classic better than most and it’s a huge shame that he failed to create a worthy sequel. This fourth Predator film is the worst of the franchise and a very disappointing production all around. Someday they’ll find someone to rejuvenate and breath new life into the alien monster but for now, fans will have to keep on waiting.

Rating: 2/5 Stars (Disappointing)