In the Flesh: Prey

The original Predator is, charitably speaking, kind of a mess. It has its gonzo 80s charms, but its characters are largely forgettable, its themes a jumble of military adventurism and confused Vietnam-era commentary, and unlike its sister film and frequent point of comparison Alien it lacks both Ridley Scott’s cool, thoughtful camerawork and H. R. Giger’s unimpeachably threatening creature design. Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey sands off the original’s stylistic faults and repositions the conceit in Comanche territory at the start of the 18th century, creating a thematic resonance between encroaching colonial violence and the Predator’s hunting expedition as well as a connection between protagonist Naru’s (Amber Midthunder) coming of age hunt and the creature’s. Midthunder is tremendously compelling as Naru, her performance tense and believable, her arc fraught with real loss and peril. The onscreen chemistry between her and Dakota Beavers, who plays her older brother Taabe, an accomplished hunter, is rich and textured, communicating gentle rivalry, condescension, and real love without apparent effort.

The film’s action is equal parts gory and propulsive. Limbs hacked off, skulls split, bodies shredded by carbon steel blades and musket fire. A sequence pitting the Predator, a sleeker and taller specimen than the one Arnie brought down, its face hidden behind a bone plate, against a scarred and battered brown bear is among the most brutal in the series’ history, while the alien’s measured dispatching of a party of French voyageurs combines strong visual characterization with surprising turns and excellent suspense. The French serve to underscore the Predator’s arrogance, their reliance on superior technology playing into their self-image as masters of the natural world as they leave a trail of slaughtered and skinned buffalo and trampled plains in their wake. The creature has a similar lack of regard for the world it enters on its hunt, killing solely to take trophies and resorting to its high-tech weaponry whenever it faces a genuine challenge.

Trachtenberg is a rigorous realist when it comes to everything from tawing buffalo hides to restringing a bow, and he wisely spends the credit this earns him in the film’s final minutes, straining credulity just a bit in order to land a real barn-burner of a final kill. It’s the emotions behind the moment that really sell it. Everything Trachtenberg builds between Naru, her brother, and their mother, Aruka (Michelle Thrush), comes full circle in a way that engages Comanche culture and morality more or less on its own terms without injecting any Western girl power nonsense. The film affords plenty of room for Midthunder to emote on her own, spending minutes on the workaday troubles and pleasures of life and work in the forest and often capturing real beauty in the process. With a bloody flourish, Prey claims the prize of Best Predator Movie so far and establishes Trachtenberg’s chops as a solid genre journeyman.