Review – Predator: Badlands

By Sean Watkin

Directed by: Dan Trachtenberg
Written by: Patrick Aison
Story by: Dan Trachtenberg and Patrick Aison

Overview

Predator: Badlands is the latest attempt to extend the Predator franchise, following on from the success of the 2022 Trachtenberg-directed Prey. This film isn’t the first to connect the worlds of Alien and Predator, so the appearance of Weyland-Yutani wasn’t entirely a surprise. Though in Predator: Badlands, the link felt like a heavy-handed weld job; a corporate checkbox more than meaningful world-building.

Where as its predecessor, Prey, was a stripped-back, authentic survival thriller that re-enegerised the series, Badlands seems to be the antithesis: a CGI-heavy, quip-laden theme park ride that sacrifices tone, tension, and texture for accessibility. It had more in common with Star Wars than it did with the original movie in this franchise.

Tone and direction

Trachtenberg’s direction here is surprisingly uneven. The director who brought us the raw realism and quiet suspense of Prey seems to be hamstrung by studio interference. At least, that’s what I’m hoping. Badlands bears the fingerprints of the glossy, marketable, utterly-devoid-of-grit “Disney effect”.

Every potential dark or tense moment is defused with a joke or a moral platitude. The predator, once the embodiment of fear and mystery, has been reimagined as a digital spectacle that feels safe, predicable, domesticated, and oddly human.

Plot and writing

The story trudges along at a painful pace that had me asking myself: “Why is this still on?”. The heavy exposition in parts is something I’ve come to expect from modern film, where nuance seems to be a thing of the past, or a rare gift that only some screenwriters now possess. If I heard another pseudo-inspirational line of dialogue, I’d have gone insane. The “message” is clear because it’s so laboured that it becomes nauseating, hammering home themes of teamwork, chosen family, and empathy with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

The Weyland-Yutani connection was, I’m sure, the writer and director’s “this is for the fans” moment; a nod to the now shared Alien/Predator mythology. Though, in this film it lands with a hollow thud. Rather than feeling like an organic connection, it’s a clumsy studio insertion (probably on the back of the inexplicable success of Alien: Earth). I won’t say that it adds nothing to the story, because that would be a lie. This connection is what Trachtenberg and Aison have hung their whole movie on.

Characterisation

Thia is clearly intended to be beloved, and it turns out she is anything but. Repetitive, grating, and never genuinely funny, she embodies everything wrong with Badlands‘ tone. I won’t rag on Elle Fanning’s performance, because I feel she could have achieved more with a better script.

The film wants Thia to be comic relief against Dek’s (the predator has a name, you see) all-too-human narrative emotional anchor. Every attempt at Thia’s charm or humour lands flat, her quips breaking immersion rather than building personality, and each time she opened her mouth, I was reminded of the awful writing from the Marvel movies.

In Prey, we cared about Naru because her motives were real: she was driven by fear, determination, and skill. Here, there is (sort of) a similarity to Badlands‘ main protagonist, Dek. He is driven by some of the same things. Though with Dek, he feels weighed down by these human experiences. The predator is no longer a threat, but a Dawson’s Creek version of what it used to be.

In previous films in this franchise, predators were otherworldly hunters, brutal and disciplined, and unknowable (though more recent films have explored them more). Their motives seemed almost primal, not personal. But here, Dek is given human qualities: hesitation, empathy, remorse, guilt, and shame. A humanising process that has stripped the predator of all menace. He seems less like the embodiment of survival of the fittest and more like a conflicted antihero awkwardly shoehorned into a revenge arc that nobody asked for.

The franchise once thrived on the terrifying contrast between human frailties and vulnerabilities versus the alien detachment. Badlands erases that divide, turning its ultimate predator into something pitiable. A move that feels certainly bold and misguided.

Cinematography and realism

Visually, Badlands is great to look at, but it does trade authenticity for artifice. The digital landscapes are glossy and feel sterile, more reminiscent of a cut-scene from a video game than a movie.

Reaching for a 12A rating has consequences, and for those fans of the franchise who expect blood (the red kind), you’re going to be disappointed. There is not one human in this movie, despite Trachtenberg’s best attempt to make Dek seem like one.

The realism has been lost in digital polish, leaving a world that looks impressive but feels empty.

Comic book feel

Perhaps the best way to describe Badlands is this: it would be more at home as a comic book (and in writing this, I discovered there is a prequel tie-in comic) than a feature film. The exaggerated action and one-note characters might have thrived in a graphic novel or an animated series, but not on screen.

Even the much-maligned (personally, I like them) Alien vs Predator films managed more immersion. Sure, they have flaws, but they still felt like stories taking place in a tangible and dangerous world. Badlands, by contrast, feels like a safe simulation of better films.

Verdict

Predator: Badlands is a frustrating misfire. It’s a film that tries to broaden its audience at the cost of everything that once made the franchise special to fans.

It’s not without its moments of competence. Trachtenberg knows how to stage a shot, that’s for sure, but those flashes of craft are buried beneath what feels like corporate gloss. Hardcore fans will find little to celebrate, and newcomers may wonder what the fuss about Predator ever was.

A film engineered to be easy family entertainment ends up being neither thrilling, frightening, nor memorable. It feels as synthetic as Thia.

While I hope this film hasn’t entirely hunted the franchise to extinction, I do hope the next adventure is handled with a little more care, and a lot less interference from Disney and 20th Century Fox.

This is the Predator franchise, not Star Wars. It was never intended for kids.