Prey (2022 film)

In 1719 in the Great Plains, Naru, a young Comanche woman trained as a healer, dreams of becoming a great hunter like her brother Taabe. While tracking deer she witnesses strange lights in the sky, which she believes to be a Thunderbird and a sign she is ready to become a hunter, but is actually a Predator dropship. Later, a member of the tribe is taken by a lion. Naru accompanies the search party, which retrieves the wounded man while Taabe stays behind to hunt the prey. Finding large, unusual tracks and a skinned rattlesnake, Naru circles back with Paake and reunites with Taabe. The three set a trap for the lion but it kills Paake.

Naru faces off with the lion but is knocked unconscious when she is distracted by a loud roar and lights in the distance. She awakens at home, having been carried back by Taabe. He later returns to the village carrying the animal, earning him the title of War Chief. Convinced of a greater threat in the woods, Naru departs with her dog Sarii. She stumbles into a bog pit but narrowly escapes before being attacked by a grizzly bear. The bear corners her but is then killed by the Predator, giving Naru time to escape before running into a group of Comanche sent to find her. The Predator, which Naru calls a "Mupitsi" after Pia Mupitsi ('Mother owl') a monster in Comanche folklore,^[4][5] ambushes and kills the men in combat, while Naru is caught in a foothold trap.

French voyageurs find and cage Naru and Sarii. Their interpreter, Raphael Adolini, questions Naru about the Predator, whom the Frenchmen have encountered before. When she refuses to talk, the lead voyageur reveals that he has Taabe captive and tortures him before using both siblings as bait for the Predator, which the French are intent on capturing. The Predator kills most of the Frenchmen while Taabe and Naru escape. Naru rescues Sarii from the camp and stumbles across a dying Raphael, who teaches her how to use his flintlock pistol^[a] in exchange for treatment for his severed leg. Naru gives him herbs that reduce his body heat to stanch the bleeding. When the Predator arrives, Raphael plays dead. Naru realizes that, due to his reduced heat, the Predator cannot see him. After it accidentally steps on Raphael, he screams and is killed.

Taabe arrives on horseback to rescue Naru. Together they weaken the Predator, but it kills Taabe. Naru flees and finds the surviving lead Frenchman. She captures him and uses him as bait. Consuming the herbs to hide her body heat, she uses Raphael's pistol to ambush the Predator after it has killed the voyageur, knocking off its mask, which she knows is used to direct its spear gun. She steals the device and lures the Predator into the bog, where she positions the mask to face the pit. She battles the Predator, which becomes mired in the bog. It fires the spear gun at Naru and misses; the mask guides the projectile back to the Predator, killing it. Naru severs its head and paints her face with its glowing green blood. She returns with its head to her village, where she is declared the new War Chief. Naru informs her tribe that it is time for them to move.

During the beginning of the closing credits, the narrative is summarized in a series of ledger art paintings that ends with a depiction of three Predator vessels descending towards the tribe.

• Amber Midthunder as Naru, a young Comanche warrior who protects her tribe against a Predator^[7]
• Dakota Beavers as Taabe, Naru's brother and a skilled hunter. In August 2022, Bennett Taylor confirmed that the script for Prey revealed Billy Sole, a Native American tracker and scout played by Sonny Landham in the original Predator (1987), to be a reincarnation of Taabe, reframing his "last stand" with that film's Predator as being due to subconscious memories of a past life.^[8][9]
• Dane DiLiegro as the Feral Predator,^[7] shown to wield primitive versions of the advanced weaponry used by Predators in previous future-set films, which Naru calls a Mupitsi after a monster in Comanche folklore.^[4]
• Michelle Thrush as Aruka, Naru and Taabe's mother^[7]
• Julian Black Antelope as Chief Kehetu^[7]
• Coco as Sarii, Naru's dog companion^[10]
• Stormee Kipp as Wasape, a Comanche hunter who looks down on Naru^[7]
• Mike Paterson as Big Beard^[11]
• Bennett Taylor as Raphael Adolini, an Italian translator hired by the French. This character was first alluded to in Predator 2 (1990) and later depicted in the comic book Predator: 1718 (1996).^[12]
• Nelson Leis as Waxed Mustache^[11]
• Troy Mundle as Spyglass^[11]

Development and casting

Prey is the second feature film from director Dan Trachtenberg (left) after 10 Cloverfield Lane. It stars Amber Midthunder (right) in the lead role as Naru.

The film began development during the production of the prior Predator film, titled The Predator (2018), when producer John Davis was approached by Dan Trachtenberg and screenwriter Patrick Aison, with a concept they had been working on since 2016.^[13] Trachtenberg said that he only had an idea about "someone trying to prove themselves and what they could be up against," that turned out to fit well into the Predator franchise, as showing a Native American "using your smarts and ingenuity" against more technologically advanced adversaries showed that "there's no set of brawn other than fortitude that can allow you to succeed against the impossible".^[14] He also said that it was an attempt at giving a full movie to a character similar to Billy from the original Predator, a Native American who decides to stand up against the alien.^[15] 20th Century Studios production president Emma Watts fast-tracked the development of the film, which was expected to be R-rated.^[16]

In December 2019, the film was initially under wraps, going by the name of Skulls. The film reportedly was to "follow a Comanche woman who goes against gender norms and traditions to become a warrior". It was to be directed by Trachtenberg and written by Aison.^[17] Cast auditions were held in February 2020, before pre-production was shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic.^[18] In November 2020, Skulls was revealed to be a codename for a fifth installment in the Predator franchise, with the same creative team working on the film.^[19][20] Upon the announcement, Trachtenberg indicated that the original intention was to market the film with no reference to the Predators, something no longer possible with the confirmation of the film's place in the franchise.^[21] Prey had been the first title for the film that Trachtenberg proposed, serving as "a mirror to the main franchise" and intending for it to serve as a standalone installment due to production of Shane Black's The Predator (2018). He also choose the title as he wanted to avoid traditional naming conventions for franchise films and considered there was sufficient precedent to do so. The Comanche were chosen as the central tribe because Trachtenberg considered them "the most fierce warriors to walk this continent, arguably, and they were incredibly innovative."^[15] He also wished to portray them as the heroes instead of their usual portrayal as sidekicks or villains.^[22]

In May 2021, Amber Midthunder was announced to star.^[23] On November 12, 2021, Disney+ Day, the film was given the title Prey, and announced for a mid-2022 release on Hulu and Disney+ internationally.^[24] Trachtenberg explained his goal for the film was to get back to the roots of the franchise: "the ingenuity of a human being who won't give up, who's able to observe and interpret, basically being able to beat a stronger, more powerful, well-armed force".^[1] Dane DiLiegro ended up becoming the Predator because Dan Trachtenberg sought a different type compared to the original portrayer Kevin Peter Hall's "WWF 1987 wrestler standoff type thing", leading to someone with a more 'feline' athletic body,^[25][26] that would also allow what effects artist Alec Gillis described as "some elegance and fluidity of movement as opposed to the Hulking Stuntman School of Suit Performance."^[27]

Filming

Filming began in June 2021^[28] in Calgary, Alberta^[29] primarily in Stoney Nakoda First Nation land 45 minutes outside the city, with studio set pieces including the beaver dam where Naru hides from a bear and the fur trapper camp where she baits the Predator. Additional locations include Moose Mountain and Elbow River.^[30][31] The cast preceded filming with four weeks of training camp, working with weapons and personal trainers, and while team-building they conceived a sign language for the characters to communicate non-verbally.^[32] Midthunder had a particular focus on axe throwing, with a rope being attached to the axe's end in order for it to be quickly obtained.^[33] Jhane Myers, a member of both the Comanche Nation and the Blackfeet Nation,^[34] served as a producer on the film.^[35] Describing filming near Calgary, Myers stated, "We were shooting on Stoney Nakoda land. [Midthunder] is part Nakoda, even I am on my grandmother's side. Usually when we start a production, someone [from the Native community] comes in and does a cedar ceremony and blesses everything. But because we had so many Indigenous people on the cast, First Nation people too, and since we were on true plains land, they sent out two pipe carriers and two smudge people to have a pipe ceremony."^[34] The pipe ceremony was conducted outside Calgary by local Indigenous leaders and attended by Midthunder and her co-stars Beavers and Kipp, as well as Myers and Trachtenberg, among others.^[34] The first scenes filmed involved the Comanche camp, including the ending right in the second week, before moving onto parts focusing on Naru solo and the French trappers prior to actually featuring the Predator on the set.^[18]

Cinematographer Jeff Cutter filmed in the anamorphic format to better depict the vast locations, using a relatively naturalistic approach without much artificial lighting, "to respect nature and to respect the landscapes", which in the night sequences relied mostly on torches along with "soft, low underexposed amounts of blue" to replicate moonlight. For added illumination in the actors' faces, the torches would also have LED strips on the end that faced away from the camera. The day scenes took advantage from how daylight lasts "close to 14 or 15 hours a day" in Calgary during the summer, along with how the magic hour lasted twice as long as in Los Angeles. Cutter found the scene where the Predator engages in a fight with the French trappers to be the most difficult to film, being shot across eight days in a 250 square feet (23 m²) area with a hundred scenographic trees and three smoke machines. The scenes depicting the Predator vision were filmed with a thermographic camera lying on top of the regular one.^[36][31] The scene with the skinned bison was added as a red herring to invoke how the Predators skinned the dead humans in the previous movies, only for it to turn out to be the French expeditionaries culling the buffalo to harm the Comanche.^[14]

In July 2021, Davis revealed that the film was officially three quarters of the way finished.^[16] In September, filming wrapped and the castings of Dakota Beavers and Dane DiLiegro were confirmed.^[37] Sarii, Naru's dog companion, was played by a Carolina dog named Coco who was adopted and trained specifically for the film. The idea of giving Naru a dog companion was inspired by Mad Max 2. Initially, Coco was to be in fewer scenes, but they found with her training and energy they were able to include the dog in several more scenes, including some of the action sequences.^[10]

Language

Trachtenberg said they discussed whether they should start the film with characters speaking the Comanche language before switching to English for the benefit of the audience, similar to the Russian language in The Hunt for Red October (1990). They considered a similar approach at first but ultimately felt it did not work. The film was shot in English and later dubbed in Comanche, with the entire cast performing an alternate all-Comanche dub of the film.^[38] The film is the first feature film to have a full Comanche language dub.^[1] Both language versions, Comanche and English, are available on Hulu and Disney+.^[1]

Special effects

Amalgamated Dynamics Inc. (ADI) was hired to work on the special and creature effects on the film, having previously worked on The Predator and the crossover films Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007).^[39] The Predator's new design aimed to make him scarier and also take advantage of the leaner physique of portrayer Dane DiLiegro. To make him less humanoid, there were changes to the face like more spaced eyes that led to a head fully made of animatronics standing atop DiLiegro's own, reducing his sight to two small holes in the neck piece. The costume, which had the challenge of being flexible for the fight choreography while resistant enough to withstand the location's weather,^[27] weighed 80 pounds (36 kg) and was primarily made out of foam latex, which DiLiegro noted as being "essentially a sponge" getting heavier and wetter as he sweated under the summer sun.^[25]

During post-production, Moving Picture Company was the primary contractor for the visual effects; these included a full digital recreation of the Predator, mostly for scenes where he is invisible or to augment or replace parts of the animatronic suit, along with computer-generated animals, blood, arrows and environmental enhancements.^[40] DiLiegro himself provided the digital Predator's motion capture.^[25] Additional visual effects were provided by Industrial Light & Magic, Track VFX and Pixel Light Effects. The Third Floor, Inc. provided previsualization reels.^[36] The film's main and end titles were done by Filmograph in collaboration with Native American illustrators, who provided an animated version of a Plains-style hide painting, which depicts the film's entire narrative.^[41] At the very end, the painting includes action not shown in the film: Naru, Sarii and three other Comanche are gathered around the severed head of the Predator. They look up and, amid lightning, see three Predator spaceships headed down from the sky towards them.^[42]

Sarah Schachner composed the musical score.^[43] Trachtenberg hired her after playing Assassin's Creed: Valhalla during pre-production and being impressed with her score for the game.^[44] Schachner said the music had to play a big role given the film's sparse dialogue, with the challenge of "feeling equally large and expansive as well as intimate and raw", as it featured both "fun gory action and suspense" and Naru's emotional character arc. Trachtenberg worked closely with Schachner to develop Naru's theme, as the director "was adamant that it should feel like a journey; that it starts small and really take you somewhere." Schachner recorded most of the strings herself, and Native American musician Robert Mirabal provided flute and vocals.^[45] The soundtrack album was released by Hollywood Records on August 5, 2022.^[46]

During the film's production, Myers provided binders of reference materials to the production team.^[47] Myers advised the production on creating a period-accurate toothbrush, which Midthunder can be seen using in the film.^[35] An early draft of the script did not include mention of horses; Myers insisted that horses be added, later stating, "We're a horse culture, so you can see that in [the character of] Taabe and his horse riding. And then you can see that in the camps where we have horses. When I originally saw the first script, there were no horses in it. And I said, 'You can't have Comanches without horses!' So that's where that came in, and when we wrote the Taabe scene."^[48] People in the southwest began to acquire horses in the 16th century by trading or stealing them from Spanish colonists in New Mexico. As horse culture moved northward, the Comanche were among the first to commit to a fully mounted nomadic lifestyle. This occurred by the 1730s, when they had acquired enough horses to put all their people on horseback.^[49]

Brad Curran of Screen Rant described the Comanche characters' clothing, village setting, and hunting lifestyle depicted in the film as historically accurate, along with the depiction of the French trappers as hostile towards the Comanche.^[50] Curran stated the film makes Comanche gender roles "central to its story", intending for the female protagonist to subvert traditional Comanche gender roles; men had generally been depicted in more physical roles as hunters and warriors, while women served as caregivers who oversaw homes, children, and food preparation.^[50]

Theatrical

Prey premiered at the San Diego Comic-Con on July 21, 2022 during an exclusive screening hosted by Collider, and was released by 20th Century Studios as a Hulu original film on August 5.^[51][52] It was also released on Disney+ Hotstar in Southeast Asian territories, on Star+ in Latin America and on Disney+ as part of the Star content hub in other international territories.^[53]

Home media

The film was released on DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray on October 3, 2023.^[54]

Audience viewership

According to 20th Century Studios, Prey was the most-watched premiere across all films and television series on Hulu in the United States, as well as the most-watched film premiere on Star in international markets, and on Star+ in Latin America.^{[55][56][57][58]} According to streaming aggregator Reelgood, Prey was the most watched program across all platforms during the week of August 12, 2022.^[59] According to Whip Media, Prey was the most watched movie in the United States from August 5 to August 7, 2022.^[60]

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of 276 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.7/10. The website's consensus reads: "The rare action thriller that spikes adrenaline without skimping on character development, Prey is a Predator sequel done right."^[61] Metacritic gave the film a weighted average score of 71 out of 100, based on 43 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[62] It became the highest-rated Predator film on both websites^[63] with many critics calling it the best Predator installment since the first film.^[64][65] Two stars from the original Predator film commented positively. Jesse Ventura praised Amber Midthunder and the director: "Thank you for making a such a thoughtful, creative, and wonderful film."^[66] Bill Duke was also enthusiastic about the film: "It's an amazing film and @AmberMidthunder is phenomenal."^[67][68]

David Fear of Rolling Stone referred to the film as a "long-awaited masterpiece" and "series highlight" and compared Midthunder's character favorably to Ellen Ripley of the Alien films.^[69] Andrew Webster of The Verge admired "how patient it is", adding, "What makes Prey work is its simplicity. It never strays from its concept, instead slowly building up the tension before reaching a very exciting battle."^[70] Belen Edwards of Mashable called it "intimate and character-driven, with more than enough action to satisfy the most die-hard Predator fans ... even if you've never watched a Predator movie, chances are you'll love Prey. It's just that good."^[71]

In a 3.5-out-of-4-star review, Odie Henderson of RogerEbert.com praised Naru's character and the representation of the Comanche Nation and called the film a "scary and fun amusement park ride that also elicits a surprisingly tender emotional response".^[72] Tom Jorgensen of IGN rated it 8 out of 10, commended the level of violence and tension depicted across the action sequences, and felt the story was simple without being simplistic.^[73] James Dyer of Empire rated the movie 4 out of 5 stars and found it to be the best Predator since the original, with a "ferocious heroine, authentic period setting, and a bloody string of inventive action beats".^[74]

Wendy Ide, in a 4-out-of-5-star review in the Observer, said that Prey "stays true to the essence of the original – stylishly violent, stickily graphic, impossibly tense" but that it was also successful "as a self-contained entity".^[75] Clarisse Loughrey gave the film 4 stars out of 5 in a review in the Independent praising the lighting and sound design while also hailing the film's message of empowerment.^[76] Kevin Maher in the Times enjoyed the jeopardy of the film with characters being "in actual danger of harm, injury or even death".^[77]

Benjamin Lee for the Guardian gave the film 3 stars out of 5 but said, "It feels genuinely new to see a genre film of this scale centred on an almost entirely Native cast."^[78] The New York Times's Jeannette Catsoulis disliked the film's editing, plot, and antagonists but commended Midthunder's performance, Cutter's cinematography, and the authentic depiction of the Native American culture.^[79] Writing for Slant Magazine, Chuck Bowen was critical of Trachtenberg's direction as he did not like the costumes or the depiction of the Predator, feeling it to be a "dull matter-of-factness". Going on to rate the film 1 star out of 5, he negatively compared the film to Predator and opined the predator motif was treated in a literal manner, resulting in "a mess of anonymous action sequences and half-baked symbolism".^[80]

Accolades

Prey was nominated for six Primetime Emmy Awards winning one for Outstanding Sound Editing for a Limited or Anthology Series, Movie or Special marking the first Emmy win for the Predator franchise.^[81]

In June 2022, Trachtenberg stated that there are discussions for additional installments to be developed after the release of Prey, saying their intent was to "do things that have not been done before" in the franchise.^[98] In August, Bennett Taylor expressed interest in reprising his role as Raphael Adolini in a potential Prey prequel, intending for the project to serve as a loose adaptation of the comic book storyline Predator: 1718 (1996), where Adolini is initially introduced.^[99] In October 2023, Trachtenberg confirmed the studio's interest in continuing the franchise with ongoing discussions as to how it can be done properly.^[100] The filmmaker stated that discussions of where to take Predator next have occurred since production on Prey while acknowledging the potential for Amber Midthunder to reprise her role.^[101] He later stated that the creatives involved are looking for ways to live up to the quality of Prey while also adapting something new for the franchise.^[102] Production Weekly listed a follow-up project currently in development.^[103][104] While a sequel to Prey is in development, a separate entry in the film franchise, titled Badlands, is currently in development by Dan Trachtenberg.^[105]

• Official website
• Prey at IMDb