Review: Prey (2022)
The highest compliment I can award Prey is that it feels like neither a sequel or franchise fodder. Technically, it's the latest in a long line of Predator sequels and spin-offs, but the movie stands on its own by offering a self-contained story that doesn't require any past knowledge of the series or its lore. It also eschews many of the blockbuster's trappings by narrowing its scope to just a handful of characters, keeping the action intimate, and limiting the running time to a restrained 100 minutes--none of which are wasted. The film is a study in economic storytelling in which every part is in service of the whole. A steel trap that gets introduced in Act I gets used in Act II. A line of dialogue about the importance of keeping bow strings dry is foreshadowing of a future event. Everything is here for a reason. Prey is a sci-fi survival story in which a Predator alien arrives on Earth in the year 1719 to hunt the most dangerous game. It finds that cha...
