Predator: Badlands Review – Sci-Fi Movie Has Killer Chemistry

There are many reasons to look back on Alien: Covenant as a disappointment. The abandonment of the Space Jockey mystery from the original film; the obligatory return to xenomorph formula by a filmmaker long since bored with it; and the callous disregard of Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw cover most of the bases. Yet a smaller, if gnawing, flaw persists: After Prometheus ended on the amusing sight of our hero, the aforementioned Shaw, teaming up with the severed but-still-chatty head of a Weyland-Yutani synthetic (Michael Fassbender), the sequel did nothing with that anime-ready contrast.

What a surprise it is then that 13 years later, another franchise would take the concept and run with it. The way director Dan Trachtenberg even describes it, this silhouette of a lonely, out-of-his-depth Predator and the ruined synth he meets along the way is the mental image which inspired the whole Predator: Badlands shebang. If that’s true, Trachtenberg should trust his instincts evermore going forward, because Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi’s diminutive Predator (relatively speaking) trekking across mountains and forests with a bisected-but-bubbly Elle Fanning strapped to his back indeed looks like something stripped from an ‘80s sci-fi novel’s illustrations page, and plays like a cinematic throwback too.

This is not to say Predator: Badlands feels like a prototypical return to the 1980s roots of the Predator or Alien franchises, with Fanning’s loquacious android hailing form the latter. This is something new for each series, and may even flirt with blasphemy among those who view the titular Predator (or Yautja, as they are apparently called in their home world’s mother tongue) as purely a villain—an extraterrestrial Count Zaroff, here to bag Arnold Schwarzenegger like he’s the most dangerous game in the cosmos. In fact, Badlands is quite a conventional hero’s journey about a Predator realizing he was the good guy all along.

Heresy? Maybe. But for those who miss the now increasingly antiquated genre movies of 20 to 25 years ago that would play their Comic-Con conceits straight, and without a trace of self-deprecating irony, Badlands’ sweeping helicopter shots of a Yautja and his broken robo-bae making tracks across New Zealand vistas is like a blast from the Hall H past. And a welcome one at that.

While largely filmed in the land of Hobbits and Shires, in Predator: Badlands this place is called Genna, the apparently most dangerous planet in the known universe. On these desolate grounds, even Yautja walk with caution, for here lives the Kalisk, a mysterious giant beast that is considered unkillable after every Predator who has landed on that planet failed to return. To most Yautja, it represents death. But for Dek (Schuster-Koloamatangi), it signifies redemption. Played by an actor of six feet in height, Dek is considered a “runt” by his father (Reuben de Jong) and the other members of his tribe. And when the movie begins, what Dek mistakes for playful training with his brother Kwei (Michael Homick) turns out to be a last chance.

Kwei has defied their father’s orders to murder Dek and “cull the clan” of his weakness. Instead Kwei reluctantly sends Dek on a likely one-way mission to Genna. There little brother will prove his Yautja bonafides by taking the head of the unkillable as his trophy… or he’ll die trying. And on a planet as hostile as this, there are plenty of other hazards that could kill him before he even finds the prize. Fortunately, there are also a handful of Weyland-Yutani synths scattered to the wind after their own exploratory mission went sideways. Among them is Thia, Fanning’s endlessly chipper automaton who’s long since lost her legs but never her ability to charm any audience—be they a movie house or an initially hostile Yautja in need of some new tools (and maybe company?).

With its spartan setup and ensemble, Predator: Badlands is regressively, and refreshingly, uncomplicated. It’s as straightforward as a ‘90s comic book about a Predator or Terminator meeting Batman, and yet it never feels dumb even when keeping things simple. This is a significant testament to the casting. While the extended prologue on the Yautja’s home planet is fairly lore (and CGI) heavy, once the film gallops toward Dek and Thia’s first meeting, the film finds its winsome two-hander energy and almost never lets it go.

Much of this needs to be credited to Schuster-Koloamatangi and the makeup team, who are able to convey the actor’s real performance despite mountains of prosthetics and some CG-enhancement. He still looks convincingly alien, but there is a more human and tactile performance in those eyes than anything ever before produced in the Predator franchise. We get a sense of Dek’s pride and also vulnerability. Still, the reason the movie works as well as it does can be largely attributed to Fanning, a warm and intelligent performer who knows how to beguile the camera with a sing-songy voice, which here can bely a brutal intelligence behind those luminous lighthouse eyes.

The actress actually does double duty in the movie, playing both Thia and her “twin sister,” the unsurprisingly colder and more typical Weyland model, Tessa, who is also wandering Genna with all her appendages intact. It’s a nice actor’s showcase to switch between ice and… if not fire, then maybe hot cocoa. But it’s really about the contrast she brings like an automated Scarecrow waiting to be struck down from a trap by Dek’s brutish Dorothy that gives the movie its predictable, albeit pleasant, heart.

Mileage might vary about that conventionality, however. While none of the Predator movies have ever been quite what I’d call subversive in their plotting—at least once you get over the fact that Schwarzenegger is little more than a slasher movie’s final girl in the 1987 original—they certainly were hard-edged. Conversely, Badlands has a deliberate adventure-movie coziness about it as Dek’s prickly exterior is thawed first by Thia—whom he mostly refers to as “tool”—and then a cuddly monkey-sized alien creature who starts following them around like a lost puppy. This is a far cry from the “ugly motherf****” days of the series’ origins, and indeed matches the movie’s new PG-13 look and tone.

Truthfully though, the lack of an R-rating only visually hurt when aliens run into some other Weyland-Yutani synthetic red shirts. Sequences like that should look like an earthquake hit a dairy farm, but Badlands’ determination to play things safe means a lack of the milky substance that comprises synth blood in the Alien flicks. Perhaps more unfortunate still, the need to make this as accessible a blockbuster as possible leads to Badlands losing much of the cerebral weightiness of Thia’s own home franchise, especially in regard to questions of what it means to be “human,” “alive,” and a company man (or woman). 

Badlands plays things down the middle as a creature-feature adventure yarn, but plays them exceedingly well. As with the tenser Predator offshoot, Prey, and 10 Cloverfield Lane, Trachtenberg reveals a strong command of tone and style in his genre efforts. Whereas those other films flirted more with horror or suspense elements, Badlands is a “survive the island” movie to the hilt, and does the concept better than the last decade’s worth of Jurassic Park and King Kong flicks. The various alien designs on Genna are nasty and fun hybrids of fangs, fur, and tentacles. And an especially clever touch is “razor grass” wherein even the planet’s fauna will cut you to pieces.

All of the set-pieces revolving around Dek figuring out how to circumnavigate the planet’s native threats, often while blocking out an invasive robot’s jibber-jabber, are winners. And when the movie switches to more human-sized threats, the emphasis on in-camera fight choreography is still amusing if less exciting.

At the end of the day, I am not sure Dek is a good Yautja. He repeatedly relies on the help of other species to survive and even comes to trust a faulty earth tool that Sigourney Weaver sure as hell could never get to work right. But I also know this: he and that giddy gizmo make for the most entertaining Predator movie since the original. I am not sure it’s better than Prey, but it is a good pulpy night at the movies, and promises grand things to come as long as Trachtenberg is mapping the Predator’s next hunt.

Predator: Badlands opens on Friday, Nov. 7.