Prey (2022)

1719, in the territory of a tribe of Comanche on the Great Plains. Mid-20s teen Naru (Amber Midthunder) wants to become a warrior rather badly. She certainly has at least half the skill set and double the brains to do it, but not surprisingly, what we see of the rest of her tribe is less than happy to see a young woman trying to become a warrior.

It doesn’t make things easier for Naru that she has many of the character traits of a typical YA heroine, so she’s stubborn when compromise could get her further, capable but not as insanely capable as she seems to believe herself – which is to say, she’s human – moody and broody, and not at all great with people. She’s also in something of a competition with her brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers). Taabe’s not always unsympathetic to his sister and her capabilities, but he’s also the star young warrior of the tribe, and clearly doesn’t quite get how much harder his sister has to work for the same gain, or just doesn’t want to see it.

All these problems become rather dangerous for everyone involved once a young warrior is killed by something. Taabe and most of the others believe he has been killed by a puma, but Naru finds tracks and hints that suggest something more dangerous. Like, for example, one of the hunting-mad aliens of the other Predator movies.

Eventually, of course, it will fall to Naru to conquer the alien killer.

There are moments, quite a few even, when Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey is a great, tight, survival thriller about a young, capable, and rather deadly young woman in a fight for her life and her tribe’s respect against a technologically superior force, her own people’s failings, and some of those other alien invaders that will historically be their downfall. Some of the action set pieces are very clever indeed, using the by now well-known traits of our alien menace and the historical situation in inventive and very exciting ways.

There are other moments when Naru is saved by the hero’s death exemption rather than her own abilities or even just luck (which is the thing that saves most of us sooner or later, or just doesn’t); moments when the film’s feminist messaging feels the need to hammer its point home in the most unnecessary way when it would be much more effective to simply show instead of tell us by seeing Naru prevail as well as the things she prevails over; and moments when Naru and the rest of her tribe act so much the contemporary YA characters, it can become difficult to care about her or them, or believe they are actually members of a tribal community from the 18th Century.

The good parts of the film definitely prevail, certainly enough to make this a film well worth watching as well as the second best movie in the Predator franchise (which sounds like a bit of a back-handed compliment, but isn’t meant to be in this case). Prey’s problem is simply that its good parts are exquisite, while the bad parts are nothing which could not have been fixed by a little more subtlety and care in the script. So this could have been a real classic, yet can’t quite get away from its flaws enough for that, and merely ends up being pretty great.