Prey is a distinctly odd movie in that it simultaneously looks fantastic—director Dan Trachtenberg and cinematographer Jeff Cutter know how to frame a shot and pace a sequence—and cheaply ugly, with some truly clunky computer-generated animals through the first hour of the picture. But the beauty and the ugliness mask a larger issue, which is that Prey fundamentally misunderstands why Predator worked so well.
The basic appeal of Predator—and, to varying degrees, the films that followed—is simple: It posits scenarios in which apex human predators are brought into conflict with a nigh-on unstoppable intergalactic hunter loaded with both physical and technological advantages and says, more or less, “lol good luck.” You take human alphas and pit them against the scariest sonsab**ches...