Wednesday, September 26, 2018

[Review] The Predator


Writer-director Shane Black tries his hand at the latest installment of the Predator franchise, and the result is a haphazard, and sometimes straight-up lousy jumble of unnecessary sci-fi puke.

A mismatched crew of ragtag ex-soldiers, including Boyd Holbrook (Logan), Trevante Rhodes (Moonlight), and Keegan-Michael Key, along with a keen biologist (played by Olivia Munn) are tasked with hunting down and extinguishing an invasion of rabid space beasts, and things don't go very smoothly. In fact, nothing in this wildly convoluted plot goes very smoothly.

The film carries a campy sleaze and deploys a low-stakes tone that is more head-scratching than it is endearing. This is one of those awkwardly expired sci-fi flicks that somehow feels like it wasn't even made during this decade. There's even some extremely unfunny, 5th grade-esque humor (and a strange obsession with derogatory jokes) in this monstrosity of a script that you could almost hear the sound of a swing and a miss if it weren't for all the crickets chirping. And the fantastical elements totally out of place -- it appears as if Shane Black wanted to inject some Marvel magic into it, but it just doesn't work. Keegan-Michael Key seems oddly miscast, and at certain points it feels like we're watching a skit of a Predator movie instead of an actual Predator movie.

The Predator just never finds its feet and it drastically fails to expound on the alien outbreak genre. The action doesn't any compelling or fresh thrills, either. Even when mutant dogs and a Super Predator show up, it just had me going, "Oh look, there's a thing." 

Aliens may exist. But this movie didn't need to.

( 4.5/10 )


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