Prey (2022, R)

Confession: I’ve never seen a Predator movie before. Not the original, not any of the crossovers with Aliens, nothing. So I can’t speak to how Prey stacks up as the latest entry in this franchise or how it stands out from its predecessors. I can only say how great it is.

In 1719, a young Comanche woman named Naru longs to prove herself as a hunter. She’s worked continually to hone her skills, but she keeps being denied her chance at the kühtaamia, a rite of passage in which a Comanche hunts animal that’s also hunting them. However, when a mysterious creature appears on the plains, Naru is determined to find it and kill it, both to protect her tribe and to show what she can do.

I know the basics of the Predator franchise, that it’s about an alien that hunts other predators for sport. I knew what they looked like, but I didn’t know about some their specific gadgets or the precise way they make their games. Watching this film, though, I didn’t feel confused or out of the loop. Rather, I learned the Predator’s ways along with Naru, which ups the tension for me. The setting also enhances the story—in the Plains, the Predator observes various animals on the food chain, the way the Comanche hunters approach their prey, and the interactions between the Comanches and European fur trappers they encounter. The definitions of “prey” and “predator” shift several times over the course of the story, in different ways.

I love watching the film’s depiction of Comanche culture. The hunters’ practices, the resourceful way they use nature for their everyday needs, the mutual relationship they have with the world around them—it’s all really cool to see. The way the film depicts the scenes between the Comanche characters and the Europeans is also done well. Just the fact that we’re dealing with French trappers who speak unsubtitled French, while Naru’s English dialogue is indicated as a stand-in for her speaking Comanche, is a good decision.

I really enjoy Naru as a heroine. I like that she’s actually not an expert hunter and this isn’t a story about a Badass Female Warrior laying waste to everything. Instead, she’s extremely smart and knowledgeable, super resourceful, an excellent tracker, and completely dedicated to target training, but she hasn’t done something like this for real before. In a weird way, I’m reminded a bit of On the Basis of Sex, where Ruth Bader Ginsburg struggles when she argues her first real-life case. Despite her knowledge and skill, she’d been excluded due to sexism, but that meant she’d been shut out of valuable experience that would’ve allowed her to really exercise those abilities. And so, Naru knows everything there is to know about tracking and makes really smart deductions as she observes the Predator, but she also misses shots because her hands are shaking or makes rookie mistakes. This is a film about her bringing plenty of raw knowledge and skill to the table but also being forged in an intense crucible as she throws herself into something she’s not really ready to handle.

I liked Amber Midthunder a lot as Kerry on Legion, and she’s fantastic here as Naru. Big chunks of the film place Naru in scenes alone, or with just her dog Sarii, so it relies on Midthunder’s nuanced performance to keep things from dragging. She does a great job letting us see the wheels turn as Naru figures things out. To draw another comparison, this time to The Hunger Games, the film and Midthunder’s performance portray a lot of what I loved about book Katniss, qualities that I thought the first movie didn’t really capture. I’m not familiar with any of the other actors, but everyone holds their own, especially Dakota Beevers as Naru’s brother Taabe.

Warnings

Graphic violence (including the killing of animals,) language, and strong thematic elements.