PREDATOR: BADLANDS – Review by Valerie Kalfrin
Director Dan Trachtenberg continues to rejuvenate the 1980s sci-fi action franchise Predator with Predator: Badlands, a surprisingly fun crowd-pleaser full of eye-popping imagery, clever fights, and entertaining chemistry.
Viewers need only a passing understanding of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s original 1987 rumble in the jungle to grasp the setup. An alien species focused on hunting targets a particular prey to prove its superiority.
Yet instead of featuring a new target who tangles with these aliens, such as the female Comanche warrior of 2022’s Prey and the Viking, ninja, and World War II flying ace of this year’s animated Killer of Killers, Predator: Badlands puts the alien itself in the crosshairs. No killer of killers arrives fully formed, after all, and screenwriter Patrick Aison, who also worked with Trachtenberg on Prey, introduces an aspiring one whose own species prefers to write him off.
Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is a runt among his brethren on Yautja Prime, where the credo says their species is prey to none, friend to none, and predator to all. In fact, his own father thinks their tribe would be better without him. He dismissively orders his other son, Kwei (Michael Homik), to kill the shorter and smaller Dek.
Kwei, though, can’t bear to do it, considering Dek saved him from death as a boy. So he lets Dek escape to a perilous woodland planet where one particular creature even frightens their father. Slay that beast, Dek thinks, and he’ll more than prove his mettle.
This is Trachtenberg’s third Predator-related film after Prey and Predator: Killer of Killers, both of which streamed solely on Hulu. Predator: Badlands deserves its theatrical release, especially in IMAX, where viewers can appreciate the special effects team’s impressive work and intricate fight choreography. The planet is rich with color and texture, deceptively inviting with glass that glistens like ice and slices like razors, vines with teeth and minds of their own, and maimed creatures that somehow regenerate.
Dek, speaking in a guttural tongue with subtitles, turns out to be quite expressive, with piercing yellow eyes, crab-like jaws, and an underdog’s chipped fang for good measure. Unlike the skilled assassins of, well, the rest of this franchise, he’s fairly hapless, and it’s engaging to watch his frustration as well as see how he problem-solves. He soon stumbles across Thia (Elle Fanning), a stranded android researching the planet’s biodiversity, who convinces him to use her knowledge to capture his quarry.
Cleaved in two, Thia has more on her mind than recovering her bottom half, though she’s nevertheless amiable company. Fanning is a hoot as an upper torso who’s handy in combat, leading to some of the more creative fight scenes I’ve seen this year. (Her colleagues, also androids, don’t bleed when various foes pick them off, keeping the film PG-13.) She’s excited to learn about Dek’s species while unwittingly teaching him a thing or two. Initially too chatty for Dek, who turns her to face the rear when he carries her on his back, Thia provides guileless yet insightful banter that shades this odd couple with humor and depth.
Naturally, Predator: Badlands references the larger Predator franchise—and leaves the ending open for more—but like Prey and Predator: Killer of Killers, it succeeds on its own. It’s a wild adventure with larger themes about strength, honor, and rethinking what you need in order to survive.
