Set in 1719 in The Great Northern Plains, Naru (Amber Midthunder) is a young Comanche woman who while trained as a healer has aspirations of being a hunter like her brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers). When Naru sees what she thinks is the "thunderbird" in the sky, she takes this as a sign she is ready to prove herself a hunter. As she joins a group lead by her brother set on taking down a mountain lion, they soon come across a creature more dangerous than they've encountered before.
Prey marks the first Predator movie made and released since Disney bought Fox and the first entry in the series since the underperformance of 2018's The Predator. The film began development under the working title of Skulls when director Dan Trachtenberg and screenwriter Patrick Aison approached series producer John Davis with the initial concept that would become Prey. Trachtenberg hasn't directed a feature film his breakout hit in 2016's 10 Cloverfield Lane with a number of projects he's been attached to either moving on without him or getting cancelled with Trachtenberg's largely being on TV. Prey marks both a welcome return for Trachtenberg as well as the Predator franchise as it's probably the best entry we've had since the first one.
Much like prior films Predator and Predator 2 which took established film staples such as commando and cop movies and turned them on their head with the inclusion of an alien trophy hunter, Prey takes a set of characters in its Comanche natives who could've easily sustained their own movie independent of The Predator and make for an engaging mashup with the established monster much as they did with the characters in the first and second films. Amber Midthunder is our lead Naru and she's really good in the film as she's capable in the fight scenes but also is very green which helps sell the rougher edge to the fight scenes which include some of the clumsiness you'd expect from such skirmishes. The other actors are solid performers and lend themselves to some entertaining and very brutal sequences in the film, including a sequence in the third act which had a nice nod to the ending of Predator 2. The Predator design is really unique featuring a cruder version of the helmet that more resembles a skull than the one we're used to and it works in context. We also get a solid dog character in Sarii who's pretty much a co-lead in the film and they're every bit the character you'd expect from a human actor.
Prey is solid genre fare in its own right, but it also brings the Predator series back on track after getting derailed with the mess of 2018's The Predator. Amber Midthunder is a great lead as Naru and the action and spectacle delivers. The third act runs a bit long and maybe could've been streamlined, but aside from that this is great enetertainment.
