PREDATOR: KILLER OF KILLERS (Tribeca 2025) – Review by Valerie Kalfrin
Fans of sci-fi, action and animation should buckle up for a treat with Predator: Killer of Killers, an anthology about warriors, honor, and vengeance across times and cultures.
Set within the universe of the Predator franchise, the film’s stories are coherent enough that one doesn’t need to rewatch the offshoots of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s original 1987 Rumble in the jungle. Yet those who do will be rewarded. Predator: Killer of Killers recently premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival and is now streaming on Hulu.
Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane), who rejuvenated the franchise with 2022’s Prey, featuring a female warrior from the Comanche Nation, here shares directing duties with Joshua Wassung, a longtime visual effects supervisor (Masters of the Air, Avatar: The Last Airbender). Their collaboration results in taut and suspenseful action sequences with fluid camera movements, from the hand-to-hand combat of swordfights in feudal Japan to a World War II dogfight threading through buildings and above battleships. The imagery is rich with shadows, light, and depth of field with highly expressive characters we want to follow.
Broken into three stories roughly twenty minutes each that eventually connect, the film follows three fierce fighters: a Viking mother (Lindsay LaVanchy, The Labyrinth) in 841 A.D., a ninja (Louis Ozawa, Pachinko) in 1609 Japan whose twin brother is a samurai, and a draftee from Miami (Rick Gonzalez, Law & Order: Organized Crime) itching to be a pilot alongside a seasoned ace (sci-fi staple Michael Biehn, The Walking Dead, Aliens).
Each has their own quest and desires yet also encounters a Predator, one of the same alien species from the original action film who hunts other species for sport. Here, the aliens’ purpose is to observe and learn from these various fighters, all to win the ultimate title in their home arena: Killer of Killers.
That sounds like a videogame setup, but the script by Trachtenberg and Micho Robert Rutare (Z Nation) develops its characters, helped along through the striking animation using Unreal Engine. In interviews, the creative team has said it drew inspiration from 1988’s Akira and 2021’s Arcane, aiming to fuse live-action sensibilities with visual spectacle and stylized violence.
The film is certainly bloody, but more memorable are the thematic imagery and the characters’ wits. The Viking, with a teen son and others to protect as she tracks a warlord, battles with a jagged shield, at one point hiding below the ice from this brutal beast from another world. Embers from a fire scatter across the Predator’s camouflaged suit, which typically render it invisible. The ninja and the samurai clash in a largely wordless segment, conveying years of resentment and hurt, its opening mirroring its end.
The design of the Predator varies through each segment, echoing aspects of the original creature’s look but also learning from these new human opponents, whose weapons and tactics the Predators modify for themselves. (There’s good reason the airman’s colleagues fear something they call “blades in the sky.”) The sound design also is impressive, from Florida cicadas to recoiling chains and the crunch and clatter of racing across tile roofs. Composer Alan Silvestri’s original theme from 1987’s Predator pops up, as does Sarah Schachner’s theme from Prey.
The film ends on an ambiguous note, teasing the possible return of other characters from the franchise in animated form. While it’s unclear whether this ties in with Trachtenberg’s live-action Predator: Badlands, scheduled for release later this year, Predator: Killer of Killers is wildly entertaining on its own, a blast of artistry and adrenaline.
