Predator: Badlands

 

This review may contain spoilers!

Predator Badlands is the ninth film in the Predator franchise and follows the coming-of-age of the young Yautja known as Dek. After a personal betrayal, Dek ventures out to hunt the toughest kill in the universe, with some unlikely help along the way.

I wasn't really sure what to expect from this film, even while watching it. Everything about Badlands is about trying a new creative direction. I found the positioning of a Yautja as our protagonist instead of antagonist to be a bold, fun move. Dek is a character who adheres to the creed of his people. He hunts with honour and has an unwavering view of the way of the Yautja. Yet, Dek is a runt who forms sincere bonds with other characters in this movie - from his brother, Kwei, to the Weyland-Yutani Syth, Thia. The character growth here is simple but effective. Dek is a Yautja who learns that the most dangerous Predator is one who can hunt with a pack of his own. This film is a revenge journey and a hunt; our character is on a singular path throughout, and it is satisfying to watch him evolve as he also gains the revenge he seeks.

The way Predator: Badlands is certainly with the visual effects in mind, but it's also about presenting the audience with highly aesthetic action shots. This film is a violently entertaining outing, with many sequences stitched together with the 'cool' factor being the main driving force. I was blown away by the attention paid to the CGI in this; it's comfortably one of the nicer special effects films of the year. From the design of the Yautja, the Kalisk, right through to Elle Fanning's severed torso, these visual effects are really characteristic and distinctive. I found the score presented to be quite adrenaline-fuelled, a little primal in places, and the guttural moments raw and almost Yautja-like themselves.

Reuben de Jong, who played Father, brings an imposing physicality to this antagonist role; there is real venom here between himself and his onscreen son. Elle Fanning, who played Thia and Tessa, did a remarkable job in her dual android characters; Fanning brought delight as Thia while entirely dominating the film as her central antagonist character. Michael Homik, who played Kwei, has a nice onscreen chemistry with Schuster-Koloamatangi; the bond between brothers is well-captured and all the more heartbreaking for it.

However, the best performance came from Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, who played Dek. There is occasionally a motion capture performance that comes along that stands out from more conventional means of acting. We've seen this in movies like Lord of the Rings with Serkis, and again in Planet of the Apes with Serkis and Kebbell, and James Cameron obliterated the box office with a cast that did it in the Avatar franchise. The truth is that is exactly the playing field Schuster-Koloamatangi deserves to be in. He had the incredible physicality and guttural language of the Yautja embodied. But where this creature has been an imposing physical antagonist before, this performance breathed character into the Yautja in a way I haven't really seen before. Dek needed to be a character the audience could believe in and support for a couple of hours. Schuster-Koloamatangi achieved exactly this; I hope he gets to return and do it all again.

I think Badlands walks a weird line for the series; it's a moment of innovation that holds positives and negatives. The film as a whole skews more towards the world of Predator and Alien with a friendlier, modern blockbuster filter over it. There's not really any escape from the fact that it becomes a found family movie with an animal sidekick and a warm message about fighting together rather than apart. There is a lot of humour here, which lands far easier than Shane Black's The Predator, but still feels tonally jarring at times. Perhaps that's the main problem here: Badlands isn't like any other Predator. It loses some of its identity in trying to make the series open up to a wider audience. I also think the stakes were quite low throughout because the things that were in danger were all just special effects: aliens and robots. This made it tougher to form an emotional bond with these things as an audience.

Love it or hate it, you can't deny that Dan Trachtenberg is doing something genuinely creative with the Predator franchise right now. I would give Predator: Badlands a 7/10.