Prey

SnarkAI Score: 72/100

tldr:

Based on the information provided in the review, I would assign "Prey" a score of 72. The movie is praised for its beautiful landscapes, tense action scenes, and strong protagonist, Naru, as well as the authentic touch of the canine actor, Coco. However, it seems to suffer from some inconsistencies and requires suspension of disbelief regarding the Predator's behavior. Overall, the film appears to be entertaining and worth watching, but not without its flaws.

Our Scores are generated by SnarkAI's analysis of our reviewer's writing. The tldr summary is drafted by SnarkAI based on that review. All Images are AI-generated based on the reviewer's descriptions of scenes.

---

Can Prey reverse the Worf Effect that Predators have suffered for decades, or are they still the space equivalent of men hunting drugged lions in Africa?

The director wanted authenticity, and there are elements of this throughout, but none more than the fact the whole film was also shot in Comanche in parallel.

We meet our protagonist, Naru. She's got intricate eye makeup and is practising throwing an axe into a tree with her dog. (the dogs nearby it's not helping with the target practice) Then she spots a deer track and follows it, but a noise startles the deer, and she chases it through the forest with some parkour, her dog doing some solid herding until it's trapped by a steel trap, that she unfastens easily.

She tries to figure the trap out and half-heartedly bashes it with a rock, then wanders off after healing her dog with some magic dirt. Coco, the canine actor, is not a trained actor at all, as the director wanted authenticity, and so the breed is one from this history of Native American tribes. It's quite nice seeing a dog be a dog wandering off camera a bit and grinning rather than a perfect robot. However, it can be a little jarring when the cast is going for seriousness, and the pup is leaping up to play.

We're introduced to the Predator early, in its camo armour, with its ship flying off. We're expected to know from our meta experience that the Predator is here to hunt the most dangerous game in the universe. Humans!

Naru wants to be a hunter, like the men of the tribe, and her brother supports her (somewhat) due to her tracking skills, though our evidence of this was spotting massive hoofprints and a deer two meters away, so maybe this tribe's bar is just really low?

All the hunters hold their bowstrings strangely; given the insistence on canine accuracy, I assume this is also how Native Americans used their bows, which is a nice touch.

The hunters are hunting a lion, not realising they intern are being hunted by a Predator! Perhaps, soon, the hunter will become the hunted? Does the predator become the Prey? The obvious play on words becomes explicit, perhaps?

The landscapes are just gorgeous.

The lion in the dark is primal and scary. Naru's knocked unconscious escaping, but her brother staggers back to the fire with the lion's head and blood all over his face. It's taxed him to the limit. High on his success he boldly announces he can defeat anything out there and crushes his sister's dreams of joining the Hunters as she tried but had to be carried back and couldn't bring it home. It's impossible not to think of how this conversation will play out in reverse with the Predator. Or how much he has done exactly what the Predator is on Earth to do.

We get a grizzly ready to eat Naru, and her dog uses himself as bait to lure the bear off, He's a good dog! Trapped in a beaver dam with its teeth inches away from her all goes quiet until the bear and Predator fight it's a good tense scene and it's not clear the Predator is going to win (Which would be a hilarious end to the film) until he does and holding the carcass above himself, the predator gets revealed in true invisible man style by getting covered in blood.

You cannot fault the bravery of the Hunters, they see the Predator's face, see it shrug off an arrow or two and still attach. You can fault their intelligence. Naru legs it after she sees it slaughter basically everyone she knows. She's smarter than they were.

We meet the owners of the bear trap. Do you remember that from the start, the other bit of anachronistic tech and the only thing that really gave us a clue when this was taking place? They're scumbag French Trappers who use Naru & her brother as bait. Don't get attached.

Naru's the only one thinking about how the Predator is behaving and what that means, but the Trappers do a pretty good job of knocking it down and getting a net over it. Then things fall apart for them. One of the trappers back away when the odd little box starts bleeping. The others get closer. Naru has left by this point to rescue her dog from the rest of the Trappers. She saves the Predator a trip by killing them all herself.

Predator isn't doing so great, he's sealing himself back up where he's been cut and stabbed.

Predator stamps on a wounded captive of the French and then stabs him when he screams, it's not very on brand given he's not typically targeting non-threats.

The wirework for her brother arriving is terrible, which is a shame as the action to this points been really good, but he makes up for it in the close combat. Her brother knows that means he's not going any further. He tells his sister, "Bring it Home" and distracts Predator for her to vanish.

She tricks the Predator by arming one of the remaining trappers with a powderless gun, and he goes in for the kill, shoots him in the back of the head and grabs his mask. It's pretty great, but she is just standing there with the gun, and whilst I get the message of underestimating women, it seems unlikely an Alien hunter species would do that given it's a peculiarity of Humanity sociology.

Predator no longer takes her as non-threatening, and is doing a pretty good job of beating her up, though she takes his arm off.

Coco saves the day. Bringing her her trusty axe, Naru uses its cord to pull him into the quicksand she fell into earlier. The rise from the mud is pretty tense. Then we discover this Predator is a card-carrying half-wit as he forgot the targeting device was on his helmet and she set that up, pointing at him. It's really nicely done but does require the Predator to be carrying the idiot ball for it to work.

She returns to her tribe, covered in glowing green blood and carrying a dismembered Predators head. They take her seriously that maybe they should move on.

Its a solid horror/action movie; Naru carries the entire film, and almost everyone else is forgettable. Almost everyone but Coco.