🍿 Prey, 2022 - ★★★★ (contains spoilers)
Friday, July 21, 2023
This review may contain spoilers.
A Predator movie is only as good as its protagonist.
The dialogue can mostly suck, as it does here.
The CG effects can look like trash, as they too often do here.
The plot can be an early colonial-American choose-your-own-adventure story, as it (mostly) is here.
But if you have 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger, or 2022 Amber Midthunder, you will have a movie worth your time, and worthy of a theater run.
That Prey didn't get the latter is an affront to Midthunder's performance.
She carries the movie, together with the skilled eye of Philadelphia's own Dan Trachtenberg.
And you can't help but notice, as the movie progresses toward a climax that thrills in spite of its predictability, that only she and the Predator get any character development. They're growing in parallel: she coming into her power, and it learning that its power may, for the first time, not be enough to ensure its survival.
(And yes, the dog lives.)