Hunter Prey is set in the future on a distant desert planet where the spaceship Prometheus has crash landed, all aboard but five aboard are dead. Four soldiers in body armour lead by Commander Karza (Isaac C. Singelton Jr.) engage in a shoot-out with the fifth survivor, a prisoner named Orin Jericho (Clark Bartram) who manages to shoot & kill one of his captors & then runs off into the alien landscape. The remaining three soldiers head off in pursuit, an extraction team will rescue them in 100 hours but they must find & capture Jericho, it is of the utmost importance & nothing else matters. Jericho proves a lot more cunning & clever than first thought & picks another two of the soldiers off leaving only Centauri 7 (Damion Poitier), the two chase each other across the harsh alien desert waiting for the rescue team to land which is vitally important for both of them but for very differing reasons...
Co-produced, co-written & directed by Sandy Collora who is also credited as production designer, art director & even has a role in the film as Slyak the bounty hunter & while I wasn't expecting much from a low budget sci-fi film called Hunter Prey I was surprised at just how good it is. A straight sci-fi flick with little action, horror or scares Hunter Prey is a character driven piece although all the macho soldier talk does grate after a while & there are attempts to explore themes such as where we fit in the Universe & our own planets self importance. The script feels like a mix of Enemy Mine (1985), Star Wars (1977) & Pitch Black (2000) with it's various ideas & story revolving around a human & alien, the whole prisoner set free, a cat & mouse chase across an alien world with the script trying to put it's own spin on it with several twist's & turns towards the end. I liked the way the film doesn't reveal who is who at first & the soldiers you think are humans turn out to aliens & their prisoner turns out to be human in a nice reversal of expectation while the script also manages to blur the line between who the villains & who the good guy's are as you find yourself changing opinion a couple of times while watching it. The script tries to be a little bit too clever at the end with various twist's that are alright but start to wear thin, the majority of the film is spent following Centauri 7 chasing Jericho across the alien desert & does become a little bit repetitive at times but enough happens to maintain ones interest. At just over 80 minutes Hunter prey doesn't last that long anyway, sure it takes time build-up the story & set the scene but it's alway at the very least watchable.
Besides a pretty solid script another thing Hunter prey has going for it is it's production design which is fantastic considering the budget, the soldiers uniforms look a lot like Boba Fett from the Star wars films but they look great with battle wear, scratches & a general used appearance. Shot in Mexioc the locations are often stunning, it really does look like a hostile alien planet at times with rock formations, sandy landscapes that last forever, ravines & strange rock structures that give Hunter Prey a great visual style that director Collara exploits as he fills every inch of every frame with something visually interesting or unusual. The alien make-up effects are alright although there's no real blood or gore here. The CGI computer effects are used sparingly but are also impressive, the shots of Jericho's spaceship in space at the end look really good for instance.
Made on a supposed budget of about $425,000 there's a lot here for that money, I suspect that the makers knew the limitation of their budget & simply didn't push it to try & do something that wouldn't work. The production values are great with good effects, a rousing score, nice cinematography with no shakiness or quick editing to be seen anywhere. The acting is solid enough from a small cast.
Hunter Prey is a very polished film that looks like it cost a lot more even if the various individual parts feel quite familiar, overall I was impressed by it's impressive production values & above average script that had lofty ambitions which is nearly achieves. You could do a lot worse, a lot, lot worse.
Co-produced, co-written & directed by Sandy Collora who is also credited as production designer, art director & even has a role in the film as Slyak the bounty hunter & while I wasn't expecting much from a low budget sci-fi film called Hunter Prey I was surprised at just how good it is. A straight sci-fi flick with little action, horror or scares Hunter Prey is a character driven piece although all the macho soldier talk does grate after a while & there are attempts to explore themes such as where we fit in the Universe & our own planets self importance. The script feels like a mix of Enemy Mine (1985), Star Wars (1977) & Pitch Black (2000) with it's various ideas & story revolving around a human & alien, the whole prisoner set free, a cat & mouse chase across an alien world with the script trying to put it's own spin on it with several twist's & turns towards the end. I liked the way the film doesn't reveal who is who at first & the soldiers you think are humans turn out to aliens & their prisoner turns out to be human in a nice reversal of expectation while the script also manages to blur the line between who the villains & who the good guy's are as you find yourself changing opinion a couple of times while watching it. The script tries to be a little bit too clever at the end with various twist's that are alright but start to wear thin, the majority of the film is spent following Centauri 7 chasing Jericho across the alien desert & does become a little bit repetitive at times but enough happens to maintain ones interest. At just over 80 minutes Hunter prey doesn't last that long anyway, sure it takes time build-up the story & set the scene but it's alway at the very least watchable.
Besides a pretty solid script another thing Hunter prey has going for it is it's production design which is fantastic considering the budget, the soldiers uniforms look a lot like Boba Fett from the Star wars films but they look great with battle wear, scratches & a general used appearance. Shot in Mexioc the locations are often stunning, it really does look like a hostile alien planet at times with rock formations, sandy landscapes that last forever, ravines & strange rock structures that give Hunter Prey a great visual style that director Collara exploits as he fills every inch of every frame with something visually interesting or unusual. The alien make-up effects are alright although there's no real blood or gore here. The CGI computer effects are used sparingly but are also impressive, the shots of Jericho's spaceship in space at the end look really good for instance.
Made on a supposed budget of about $425,000 there's a lot here for that money, I suspect that the makers knew the limitation of their budget & simply didn't push it to try & do something that wouldn't work. The production values are great with good effects, a rousing score, nice cinematography with no shakiness or quick editing to be seen anywhere. The acting is solid enough from a small cast.
Hunter Prey is a very polished film that looks like it cost a lot more even if the various individual parts feel quite familiar, overall I was impressed by it's impressive production values & above average script that had lofty ambitions which is nearly achieves. You could do a lot worse, a lot, lot worse.