Movie Review: ‘Predator: Badlands’

Director: Dan Trachtenberg

Cast: Elle Fanning, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, Reuben De Jong, Rohinal Nayaran

Plot: Dek is a young Predator alien who is dismissed as being smaller and weaker than his clan. In order to prove himself, he sets out to hunt the Kalisk – thought be an impossible quarry.

Review: After debuting and peaking in the 1980s, both the Predator and Alien franchises have found their fates intertwined. Despite waning in the 90s and attempting a resurgence through collaboration, any further highly budgeted attempts to make this a blockbuster franchise for the modern day has faltered. This has turned around in the most recent years, with Alien Romulus and Alien Earth expanding on new ideas while Prey has stripped the Predator’s back down to their core essence. The animated Killer or Killers kept that ball rolling by leaning into the notion of Predator’s visiting Earth across time.

That brings us to Trachtenberg’s third entry with Predator: Badlands, a departure from the usual approach to Yuatja stories and one that again links the canon closer to that of the Alien universe. This is not a human story, it’s one that exclusively follows the perspective of a Yuatja alien creature named Dex (Schuster-Koloamatang), with a collective of synthetic beings courtesy of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. We begin on the Predator home planet Yuatja Prime, where Dex and his brother Kwei train and fight together. Unfortunately, Dex is a runt and their father insists that Kwei puts him down rather than have a weak link in their clan. In his refusal, Kwei sends Dek off in his ship to complete a challenging hunt and prove himself.

We’ve only ever had minor glimpses of the Yuatja world and technologies, and this deeper look only raises questions about how their society functions. Although they’ve got this whole hunter-clan arrangement going on and not much else, they’ve also got spaceship and computer technology to go on intergalactic jaunts. Perhaps this is a race in decline, or they’re really focused all their energies to developing plasma technology simply for their hunting. Either way, Dex is in the field without the standard claws and invisibility and must learn about this new ecosystem if he is to survive and succeed.

Help comes in the form of Thia (Fanning), the top-half of an android from Weyland-Yutani, who was on the planet to capture a specific alien specimen before things went awry. With her knowledge of the creatures of this world, Dex accepts the help of Thia and helps her connect back up with her allies and complete their own mission. Thia challenges Dex’s worldview, giving him the perspective that he does not need to bend to tradition and his father’s will.

Now the best Predator movies are the ones that put together an eccentric group of characters, each with a gimmick of two to distinguish them, and we spend a bit of time establishing them as hardcore before the Predator starts hunting them. Actually, that’s all the Predator movies good or bad, but the point is that this one scraps the ensemble cast approach in favour of a singular Predator out fighting various animals and androids. When coupled with subtitles giving us dialogue between the creatures, it feels more like a story you’d get in a spin-off comic for the dedicated fans rather than a mainstream release. The adventure of Dex is plenty of fun despite this change is pace, and we do ultimately want him to overcome his societal expectations, but it takes a while to get on board with a crab-monster, half a robot and a CGI sidekick.

We also find our hero a bit of an odd looking duck, even by Predator standards. As a younger example of the race, it makes sense that he’d be different to previous characters, but there’s something goofy about Dex. I think it’s the eyes, there’s a few points early in the movie where his sad, puppy, notice-me-senpai eyes are laughable but over the course of the movie we got used to his look and settled into it. The make-up effects bringing this main character to life are nothing short of remarkable.

Hopefully we’ve got more to see in this world still. Although a movie from a Predator’s point of view may not appeal heavily to mainstream audiences, fans of this type of movie monster will find it a treat.

Rating: SEVEN out of TEN