Between Prey and Predator: Killer of Killers, 20th Century Studios’ classic survival thriller franchise has been on a tear with stories that get at the heart of what makes this world of alien big game hunters great. In both films, director Dan Trachtenberg stuck to the Predator series’ narrative basics and focused on crafting clever action sequences that reinforced the idea that ingenuity is often key to surviving fights to the death.
Though Predator: Badlands keeps this mean streak of monster movie bangers going, its tone is markedly different than any of its brutal predecessors. Badlands is full of gore and connections to the Alien series, but it’s surprisingly heartfelt and silly in ways that Predator movies have seldom been before. The new film feels like a feature that’s meant to be seen with people you care about, which is a bit odd considering how it’s about beings who have been taught to kill things on sight. But Predator: Badlands uses that odd energy to its advantage and fashions it into an emotional weapon that hits harder than you would expect.
Set on a nightmarish planet where evolution has turned every living thing into a natural born killer, Predator: Bandlands chronicles the story of Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), a young and relatively small Yautja desperate to prove his worth. Though it is Yautja custom for runts like Dek to be killed in their youth, he has been able to grow up and become a formidable warrior thanks to his older brother Kwei (Mike Homik). Even when the siblings are locked in bloody sparring matches, it’s clear that they care about each other and share an intimate bond.
The only things Dek wants more than the respect of his father Njohrr (also Schuster-Koloamatangi) are an invisibility cloak of his own and acceptance within their family’s clan. But to earn those gifts, Dek must go out into the world on his first solo hunt and return home with the head of a monster much, much larger than himself.
Though all Yautja know and fear the deadly Kalisk — a gargantuan apex predator native to the distant planet Genna — Dek sees it as the key to his salvation. He figures that he’s got enough weapons and determination to kill the creature, but things take an unusual turn as he enters Genna’s orbit. In a very Metroid-y turn of events, Dek winds up stranded on the planet with very little of his hunting kit intact. Dek’s hunt for the Kalish is almost cut short when he’s attacked by a forest of murderous vines and poisonous pussywillows that explode when they sense movement. But his luck starts to turn around once he meets Thia (Elle Fanning) — a chipper, severely damaged Weyland-Yutani synth who has lost her legs in an accident.
It’s as Thia explains that she was built for research and is equipped with a universal language translator that Predator: Badlands shifts away from using subtitles to help you understand the Yautja native tongue. As a synth who specializes in Yautja culture, Thia is delighted to meet Dek, but he sees her as an excessively talkative and annoying tool. Dek wants to focus on finding his prey and figuring out a way to get back to his homeworld in what remains of his ruined ship. He would much rather complete the task solo, but because literally everything on Genna — from the acid-spitting animals to the glass-like grass — is deadly, he figures it’s probably worth strapping Thia to his back and listening to her advice on how to survive.
While there is a grimness to Predator: Badlands in its opening scenes, the movie quickly settles into lighthearted buddy adventure mode once its two leads are together. Thia’s robotic chipperness is a constant annoyance to her new Yautja companion, who is baffled when she tells him that she works best as part of a team. If you’re coming to Badlands with some familiarity of the larger Predator and Alien franchise, it is obvious from the jump just how unusual Dek and Thia are. Both are pointedly emotive and prone to jokes, but they do not recognize their similarities until they have saved each other a few times.
This doesn’t take all that long because Badlands consists almost entirely of action-forward set pieces — so much so that the movie often feels like a gore-filled theme park ride. Dek can only take a few steps before another plant or animal is trying to stun or eat him, and Thia cannot help but comment on how wild an adventure they are having. Especially once the duo meet a “cute” alien (Rohinal Nayaran) from Genna that hocks up loogies as a sign of friendship, Badlands starts to feel, weirdly, like a movie that’s really gunning for a PG-13 audience. You get the sense that Trachtenberg and screenwriters Patrick Aison and Brian Duffield cribbed notes from The Mandalorian, and decided to go bigger and bloodier with the action.
As silly as Predator: Badlands often is, it balances that energy out with bone-crunching fights and a handful of dramatic twists plucked right out of the Alien franchise. The new movie isn’t quite the dramatic stunner that Prey was, and its action falls just short of being as stunning as what Killer of Killers had to offer. But it makes for a solid entry in the Predator franchise — one that sets up a big and promising pivot for the future.
Predator: Badlands hits theaters on November 7th.
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