With (arguably, but not very) only one good movie out of the six made to that time, the Predator franchise was in considerably poor shape by the early 2020s. Although the studio wasn’t ready to give up on it yet, the next installment would skip a theatrical release and debut instead on Hulu streaming. To many viewers, this seemed to indicate a lack of faith in the prospects for the series to continue much longer. Honestly, if this one failed, it may well have marked the end of the line. However, to almost everyone’s surprise and relief, Prey turned out to be a great success on the platform and was widely embraced as the best Predator movie since the original.

Admittedly, that may not have been a very high bar to clear. Beyond the classic first movie, the other Predator sequels and spin-offs ranged from, at best, mediocre to terrible. Still, Prey had a lot of skepticism to overcome – not just due to its predecessors, but about the new film’s setting and choice of protagonist as well. Somehow, it cleared all the hurdles set before it and actually got people excited about Predator again.

Title:	Prey
Year of Release:	2022
Director:	Dan Trachtenberg
Watched On:	4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Also Available On:	Blu-ray Hulu

Following three direct sequels and two Alien crossovers, Prey leads the franchise in a different direction. A prequel set in 1719, the story takes place amongst Comanche natives living on the Great Plains of North America. Young Naru (Amber Midthunder) tires of being treated as an inferior by the men of her tribe and wishes to become a hunter and warrior. Only her brother, Taabe (Dakota Beavers), is at all supportive of his sister, but even he believes she’s setting herself up for disappointment. The other men are entirely dismissive of what they see as a foolish girl.

While attempting to hunt a stag on her own, Naru witnesses what she can only interpret as a great thunderbird in the sky, and a sign that she’s about to face an important trial to prove her worth. What she doesn’t understand yet is that the object is actually a spaceship conveying a Predator, who has arrived to survey the planet and catalog any worthwhile game it may offer for his race to hunt. Initial encounters with a rattlesnake and even a bear don’t present it with too much of a challenge.

When Taabe and other men of the clan believe recent unexplained slaughters to be the work of a mountain lion, they set out to kill the animal before it gets too close to their village, only to find themselves targeted by the extraterrestrial poacher. It then falls to Naru, as the only one who at all comprehends the severity of what they’re up against, to head off alone into the woods and stop this threat before it wipes out her people.

Right off the bat, focusing the story on a group of Native Americans with a woman in the lead may be expected to trigger a bunch of dog whistles among toxic elements of fandom decrying the franchise for going “woke.” I have no tolerance for complaints like that, but will admit that even I’ve tired of the cliché of 90-pound female action heroes with twig-like arms who are frequently presented as meaner and tougher and able to beat up opponents three or more times their size. The plot summary also sounds an awful lot like yet another recycling of the original Predator, in which a bunch of cocky warriors get picked off one at a time by a foe unlike anything they’ve ever experienced. That’s one of the things I most dislike about my least favorite sequel in this franchise, the 2010 Predators.

On those marks, even I was a little wary when I started watching Prey. Remarkably, the film surmounts those concerns by – to speak bluntly about it – being a fucking awesome action movie in its own right. Directed by Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane), Prey is an incredibly tense and suspenseful thriller with lots of terrific action sequences, really good visual effects (I know that most of the woodland creatures and other animals in it are CGI, but they look photorealistic enough), and a really cool and imposing design for the latest Predator itself. Unlike the last two entries, it also has an original musical score that isn’t just a regurgitation of Alan Silvestri’s themes from the first film, and other fan-service references are kept to a tolerable minimum. (A prominent callback to the line, “If It bleeds, we can kill it,” is the only one that annoyed me.)

Themes about sexism, toxic masculinity, and female empowerment are present, but handled with enough restraint to avoid beating the audience over the head with them. Nor does the movie overly sentimentalize the Native characters as a beatific and saintly culture, as some well-meaning but simplistic Westerns have. Moreover, Amber Midthunder (from the FX television series Legion) is an excellent actress and plenty convincing as a badass. I fully believe this woman can handle herself in a fight and is capable of outsmarting a technologically superior alien trying to kill her. Her faithful dog is an equally endearing character.

Rather than a retread, Prey feels more like a back-to-basics course correction, and was exactly what the Predator franchise needed at the moment it was released. How well and how long future installments can capitalize on its success is a question that may take some time to answer.

The Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

Prey initially premiered on Hulu streaming in August of 2022. Physical media releases on Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray followed in October of that year, and I shelled out for the limited edition SteelBook exclusive to the Best Buy retail chain. I had planned to watch the movie as part of a Predator marathon at that time, but stalled out after the dreary sequel Predators and didn’t progress any further.

I finally started to watch the 4K edition of Prey this past week, only for the disc to glitch out and freeze on me no more than three minutes into the movie. I had to make a choice then whether to stream the rest from Hulu (potentially in 4K, but much more heavily compressed) or switch to the standard Blu-ray in the case. I opted for the Blu-ray, mainly for its lossless audio.

The Blu-ray looks so good that I didn’t feel I missed out on too much. The 2.39:1 image is quite sharp, even in 1080p, and has rich colors and contrast.

While the 4K disc has a Dolby Atmos soundtrack, the Blu-ray is limited to DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1. However, the movie sounds fantastic in either format, and the 7.1 upmixes well to height speakers with appropriate processing in an A/V receiver. The track is incredibly atmospheric, with creative use of ambience and echoes in the forest setting. The surround channels are very active from every direction, and Dolby Surround Upmixer puts the sound of the Predator’s spaceship right above my head where it belongs. The movie also has plenty of rocking, at times room-rattling bass. This is an extremely satisfying soundtrack.

Intriguingly, both the 4K and Blu-ray discs also offer an alternate Comanche-language dub track for viewers who might prefer a little more cultural authenticity from the film. It’s an interesting gimmick, but the movie was filmed in English, and the dub is way out of sync with the mouth movements of the actors on screen. It’s also been reduced to lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 quality.

For what it’s worth, I played around with the 4K disc some more afterward, and was able to skip past the glitchy chapter to sample some of the movie in that format. The 4K version is indeed a little crisper, and the HDR grade brings some nice richness and texture to it. If you can get a copy that works all the way through, it’s the way to go. Thankfully, the regular Blu-ray isn’t too much of a compromise if that fails.

Bonus features are found only on the Blu-ray, none on the 4K disc. These start with a group audio commentary by director Dan Trachtenberg, star Amber Midthunder, cinematographer Jeff Cutter, and editor Angela Catanzaro. After that are a 12-minute making-off puff-piece featurette, a half-hour convention panel discussion, and three brief deleted scenes (one of them in animatic form) with mandatory director commentary.

Related

• Predator franchise
  • Predator (1987)
  • Predator (1987) NES video game
  • Predator 2 (1990)
  • Predators (2010)
  • The Predator (2018)
  • Predator: Killer of Killers (2025)

Note: All screenshots on this page were taken from the standard Blu-ray edition of the film and are used for illustration purposes only.