Predator: Badlands
The world of Genna is hostile and unwelcoming, every plant and animal evolved to defend itself, to hunt and scavenge with remorseless ferocity, a competition where armoured hides, speed and sharp teeth and claws are more beneficial to survival and success than high intelligence, each niche of forest and grassy plains and rocky mountainsides occupied by a species which has become better than the others at destroying all opposition.
At the top of the food chain the unkillable Kalisk, it is desired by the bioweapons division of the Weylaynd-Yutani corporation who have sent an all-synthetic crew to apprehend and return a specimen, led by the twins Thia and Tessa, programmed to express a higher degree of empathy than is customary that they might better understand the behaviour of the native life, but Genna is also the hunting ground of the Yautja, fledgling warrior Dek an outcast from his clan and attempting to reclaim his honour by slaying the beast.
The Alien and Predator films and their immediate successors a science fiction horror sequence aimed at an adult audience, diluted by the crossover Alien vs. Predator which actively modelled itself to appeal to a gamer rather than cinema audience, Predator: Badlands is the next stage in a process which has metamorphosed the iconic and sometimes extreme towards family-friendly commercialism, with The Neon Demon’s Elle Fanning as lead as sassy teen-friendly Thia and her misunderstood sibling, finding common ground with a killer alien and their adopted sidekick Bud, securing the cute Disney demographic.
The xenomorphs and Yautja, as the “predators” are formally known, once shadowy and cloaked figures of mystery and terror, hiding in corners or invisible in plain sight, Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) and his family drama are presented fully subtitled if somewhat monosyllabic in the overly expository prologue, his dispute with disappointed father Njohrr (Reuben De Jong) which results in the death of his brother Kwei (Mike Homik) who tries to protect him a barrage of statements of duty and honour the likes of which has not been seen since Star Trek explored the dreary new worlds of the Klingon culture.
Genna sometimes resembling nothing so much as Scotland conceived as a Roger Dean album cover, the physical work of creating Dek is undermined by the mediocre digital work of the native flora and fauna of the world where everything moves and bites, albeit unconvincingly, Predator: Badlands also replicating the format of a video game in that each threat is followed by another similar but bigger, the elevated threat represented by additional rows of teeth, and the gathering of elements introduced early in the film as dangerous items which combine to form a conveniently accurate and devastating super weapons in the right claws.
With moments which recall Chronicles of Riddick, Robot Jox and even How to Train Your Dragon, directed by 10 Cloverfield Lane‘s Dan Trachtenberg from a screenplay by Patrick Aison Predator: Badlands is less than the sum of its mismatched parts, even the Weyland-Yutani technology leaving it floating adrift in the timeline, the synthetics far more advanced than previously seen yet Earth stated as not having faster-than-light travel seen in Prometheus, the intended audience presumably one more keen on a high body count (non-human, of course, allowing broadly inclusive certification) and explosions than asking inconvenient questions, watchable only for the two leads who manage to overcome the circumstances and carry their roles convincingly.
Predator: Badlands is currently on general release and also screening in IMAX
