Movie Review: Predator: Badlands

By John Corrado

Director Dan Trachtenberg reinvigorated the decades old Predator franchise with his previous two entries; the 2022 prequel Prey, which was a 1700s-set Comanche survival thriller, and Predator: Killer of Killers, an animated anthology movie released earlier this year.

Trachtenberg now switches things up one more time with Predator: Badlands, which is again different in tone from both Prey and Killer of Killers. This one is much more of a sci-fi fantasy adventure, that almost plays like a 1980s Amblin movie.

Because, in Predator: Badlands, Trachtenberg and his Prey screenwriter Patrick Aison, flip the script by making the Predator our protagonist, a franchise first that works for the story he is trying to tell. This is also the first film in the franchise to receive a PG-13 rating instead of an R. All things considered, it’s a fun and enjoyable new approach.

We follow Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), a Yautja who is outcast from his clan, and rejected by his own father as a timid runt. Dek is sent in exile to the planet Genna, where he is determined to hunt an even more fearsome creature known as the Kalisk, to prove his mettle as a ruthless Predator. It’s here that he teams up with a cyborg named Thia (Elle Fanning), a “synth” missing her bottom half. From here, Predator: Badlands becomes a bit of an unlikely buddy movie, as Del and Thia – who is just a torso with arms and a head – tag team to traverse this planet.

It’s an interesting and winsome performance from Fanning, who is playing the top half of a cyborg girl but brings humanity and comic relief to the role. Fanning also impresses in her dual role as Tessa, a fellow synth who appears as an identical twin, but is much colder in her robotic demeanour. In the same vein, Schuster-Koloamatangi also takes on the role of Dek’s father, allowing him to portray the dichotomy between a dad who embraces the animalistic hunt and kill motto of his species, and a son discovering his more nurturing side.

Buried under a mix of practical effects, makeup, and motion-capture facial expressions that bring him to life, Schuster-Koloamatangi’s performance as Dek allows him to function as an engaging, even sympathetic protagonist. Trachtenberg also knows his way around staging the action set-pieces that underpin the film, as Dek and Thia encounter a variety of natural dangers and other adversaries on this planet, brought to the fore throughout the film’s somewhat simplistic, Western-like plot (yes, comparisons to The Mandalorian are all but inevitable for several reasons).

Despite the somewhat lighter, more fantastical creature feature tone of it all, Predator: Badlands still delivers a satisfying new entry for fans of the action franchise, not least of which because it’s evident throughout how much Trachtenberg loves this lore. Between Prey, Killer of Killers and now Badlands, he’s delivered a fresh new trilogy built around this IP, that makes a pretty entertaining case for it to keep going.