If Charles Darwin was still around, he would have called this film an abomination of his theories behind the struggle for existence, or widely known as Survival of the Fittest. Going by that theory, only the deadliest of predators can survive by evolving and moving up the food chain. So what becomes of their prey? A trophy collection for the hunter.
We saw this 35 years ago, when an alien predator single-handedly dismembered heavily armed soldiers led by a commando played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Human heads and spinal columns became keepsake mementos for this otherworldly hunter. But every sequel that followed Predator in 1987 became a mashup trying to capitalise on the original. Every follow-up project, including crossover collaboration with Alien Xenomorphs turned it into a forgotten franchise. Until now.
Set 300 years before the events on the first film, Prey not only works as a prequel, but also shakes the ground on which Darwin based his theory of evolution. That change is a strong female character in the lead. Played by Amber Midthunder, Naru is a Comanche woman skilled as a tracker and plant based healer. Much to the dismay of her tribal elders, Naru dreams of becoming a great hunter like her brother. Her moment of reckoning arrives with the arrival of a deadly alien predator, thus setting in motion the hunter versus hunted dynamic, and for the first time in the franchise, the prey tracking the predator.
As a follow up to sci-fi thriller 10 Cloverfield Lane, it helps that director Dan Trachtenberg has done franchise work before. Even with its B-movie budget and streaming media release, Prey looks and feels very much a cinematic achievement that must be experienced on the big screen. Sprawling cinematography of the Northern Plains, a haunting musical score reminiscent of The Last of the Mohicans, and an indigenous American actress in the lead role, gives Prey an authentic retrograde akin to a western of yesteryears. The action sequences and visual effects are just enough, and the cool shots this time is a brutally inventive limitation to the predator’s cloaking mechanism, or invisibility.
While gender equality isn’t exactly on the nose, it’s plain to see that the screenwriters have ditched the testosterone fuelled alpha male approach of the first film, and instead builds on the secret weapon of a woman. Nara can be compared to Ripley in Alien 2.0, but the difference here is Prey is set in the year 1719. It wouldn’t even matter if the film is set 1000 years ago, because that secret weapon is one that every woman is born with from the beginning of time. Male chauvinists won’t know what hit them. And neither will the predator.
