The Predator should have been great. The cast is good, full of actors like Keegan-Michael Key and Alfie Allen who thrive even in small roles, and the behind the scenes talent is even better. Shane Black directs a script he co-wrote with Fred Dekker, both of whom worked on the incredibly fun ‘80s tween horror-comedy Monster Squad (1987). Shane Black shines when he takes a shaggy dog premise and injects some unexpected life in it, and that’s exactly what this movie—the fourth or sixth (depending on if you count the Alien Vs. Predator duo) film in a franchise that started in the late-80s—needed. The Predator ends up being kind of a tepid mess, however, especially in the third act. To misquote Monster Squad, The Predator needed some nards.
You can check out the trailer of The Predator here:
Nards could have come in many forms. The basic story mirrors that of the original film: a rag-tag group of army dudes try to survive while an alien (with dreadlocks that this film needlessly explains) hunts them down. This approach wasn’t surprising: that’s the way sequels to long-running series work now, from Creed to Tron: Legacy. But Black and Dekker’s script gets few thrills from the parallels it draws to the first film—and neither does it distance itself and become its own thing. There’s even an inexplicable Blade Runner reference that, I admit, made me laugh, though it was more from incredulity than anything else. I would have liked to see fewer recreations of moments and lines first said by the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers and more scenes like the big, earnest speech given by the nominal hero played by Boyd Holbrook, which was hilariously followed by the rest of the squad’s reaction to such earnestness. It’s a scene that shows off Black’s quick-witted dialogue and sense of character and it felt like an oasis of charm in a desert of dry plot-points that don’t stand up under scrutiny.
It’s not all bad news. The pace of the film is incredible. There’s hardly a moment’s rest between large action set-pieces, which makes for a compelling (if ultimately unsatisfying) experience. Those set-pieces vary between pretty good and kinda great, at least before the last twenty minutes. There’s a solid gore factor here as well, with blood both green and red splattering all over everything. There are Preda-dogs now, too, and that’s pretty cool. One even becomes, through some strained plot contortions, loyal to Olivia Munn’s surprisingly action-savvy university professor.
But things fall apart in the final action sequences. A major character dies during a half-second shot that is almost incomprehensible. The time spent haphazardly building up the characters proves to be wasted as they become so much cannon fodder. That’s another thing that echoes the original film, but at least that massacre had the purpose of showing the futility of the masculinity the characters had spent the prior half of the movie showing off. This film has no such purpose, and its one thematic concern is one of its major stumbling points.
Mental disability comes up more than once in The Predator. The squad is formed because they are a therapy group for soldiers with PTSD. It would be interesting for a movie like The Predator to take on PTSD and other traumas, but Black and Dekker seem to have little understanding of how it works. They use it as a stand-in for actual characterization, at least for most of the group, and they touch on it and forget about it at random. There’s also a magical cure that gets revealed just before the big climax that was hard to buy at best. And then there’s the matter of the kid played by Jacob Tremblay, who is on the autism spectrum, and who becomes a target for the Predator race who want to use his spinal fluid to upgrade themselves. Olivia Munn’s evolutionary biology professor calls him potentially the next step of human evolution, and the whole thing just feels icky. The fun of a Predator movie gets undercut when that movie wants to say something about disability but does so with a lack of understanding and sensitivity.
Olivia Munn and Jacob Tremblay
Yes, The Predator can be a fun time at the movies, especially when it is big and loud, which it is often. But it doesn’t nearly reach the heights it might have had it gone through a few more drafts and a better final set-piece. And don’t get me started on the final scene, which promises a massive reveal and ends up fizzling to a sequel-promising close. It’s a scene that had me squirming in anticipation: what were we going to see? The answer is a dud and a half, the whole movie in miniature. Solid promise, propulsive execution, but lacking in ideas or follow-through. It’s a major case of nardlessness.
Alex Thompson is a PhD student in English at the Ohio State University and runs a blog here. He has written previously for Horror Homeroom on A Cure for Wellness, The Witch and The Fits, on decapitation in Upgrade, First Reformed and Hereditary, on Phantom Thread, and on Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country.
You can stream the original Predator (1987) on Amazon:
And also Dekker and Black’s Monster Squad:
