aka Predator 6
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
As my buddy Travis put it once the film had come to a close and we happily left the theater: “The hunt is the friends you made along the way.” Yeah, man. Fuck yeah it is. Dan Trachtenberg, who already impressed with Prey, does something unthinkable and pulls it off in the most pleasantly surprising of ways. He takes a Predator movie, focuses on the “monster” as a protagonist and sets it up in the template of one of those 80’s epic adventure kids movies that never felt like they were for children. It’s super violent and full of horrific things but there’s no red stuff and the fact that all the messy slaughter is being visited upon monsters and androids lets it walk away with a PG-13 rating. It’s kinda brilliant that somebody made a Predator flick with no human blood and even diehard fans of the original are like: “Yeah, that’s pretty fucking good.” Dek is the runt of his Yautja clan in the way that his father insists he be culled to avoid the shame his existence brings. Dek’s older brother disagrees and loses his head as he defends him and sends him off for the tribal hunt Yautja take part in to earn their place in the clan and their cloak. This brings Dek to a planet where nearly everything wants to kill him on his quest to claim the head of the much-feared Kalisk, a giant beast with regenerative powers and fierceness to match any of the multiple apex killers on its home planet. Now. When you hear “Planet full of apex killers of varying degrees of monstrous” your head should obvious go to one thought: “I wonder if Weyland-Yutani Corporation has heard of this?” Of course they have and of course they’re already there. This is how Dek comes across a severed in half android named Thia (Ellie Fanning) who will prove helpful with her vast knowledge of the dangerous planet’s flora and fauna. More importantly, this is how later in the film we will be able to witness the lower portion of Thia’s body kick some serious expendable Weyland-Yutani soldier booty. Dek decides using Thia as a “tool” is still in accordance with his species belief of hunting alone and he carries her along with him to help track down the Kalisk. Well, Thia has a twin “sister” in Tessa (Fanning again, getting to sink into a really fun villain role) and where Thia’s emotional programming to allow her to exploit the local creatures has kind of corrupted her into having a very sympathetic nature, Tessa is more-so a company woman through and through to the point that if you could assign emotions to synthetic life, ya may just land on sociopathy in her case. So, on top of the super murder-beast Dak is trying to find, there’s another danger growing in the background when it comes to a corporation that wants what it wants at any cost. This all leads to plenty of action set pieces that bring the ridiculous and awesomeness in equal measure. There will be the addition of an adorable monkey-puppy thing that joins our ragtag group along the way and it will play a lot more into the climax than initially expected and there’s plenty of graphic violence even if the absence of any human means no red stuff. The Predator gets to build himself some natural armor and organic weapons for one memorable look. It’s a really fun time that suffers from some silliness when it plays just a little too cute but never really insults the viewer.
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