An Average Movie-Goer’s Review
Spoilers! If you don’t want spoilers – check out the Spoiler-Free post
I love horror movies and if I’m going to watch them anyway, why not write an entertaining/funny review from the POV of an average movie-goer and not a professional critic.
Today we’re looking at 2022’s Hulu Original, Prey.
Taking place on the Northern Great Plains in 1719, Naru of the Comanche tribe attempts to prove herself as a hunter but comes face to face with the one of the deadliest predators in the galaxy.
Is it Scary?
There’s maybe two jump scares in the whole movie but it also feels like Prey was going for the more suspense kind of scares. Although after a certain point the movie drops all of that and leans into the action. Prey can also get a bit gory at times but nothing too over the top, in some scenes the movie does cut away before we see the worst of its kills.
In the end, you won’t leave the movie scared at all unless you’re planning on fighting an alien race of intergalactic warriors who kill for fun.
Also there is a main character dog named Sarii in the movie but she’s fine in the end. Wolves though… nah.
Detailed Plot:
The film opens with several shots of the Northern Great Plains in 1719 and we hear our main character Naru, (played by Amber Midthunder) tell us about a legend of a monster appearing. We cut to shots of a teepee and see Naru being kicked awake, more like shoved with a foot, but apparently she’s cool with it.
After helping with some farming, Naru and her pet dog, Sarii (played by an American Dingo named Coco), head into the forest where Naru practices her axe throwing. By practicing I mean showing off, because she is awesome at it.
Spotting some deer tracks, her and Sarii go out on the hunt and quickly find their prey. Naru gives Sarii some instructions and she immediately gets it, showing that this good dog is highly trained.
Naru prepares her throwing axe but a loud rumbling in the sky causes the deer to run off. Naru gives chase as Sarii runs around to cut it off.
Dashing, sliding under trees, and bouncing off of them, Naru almost catches the deer but misses with the axe. She then hears Sarii crying in the distance and rushes over to her finding her tail caught in a pretty small bear trap.
Naru releases Sarii, treats her wound with a balm, and inspects the bear trap. Seeing as this is taking place in 1719, it makes sense she has never seen one. As she tries to break the chains on the trap, she hears the same rumbling in the sky from earlier and rushes out of the forest. Above the plains, in the clouds, she sees something large flying by.
As we pan up, we get a title screen!
We transition to a little while later with Naru and her older brother Taabe (played by Dakota Beavers) aiming at a circling hawk by a river. After Taabe steals her kill, Naru tells him she is ready for her ‘kuhtaamia’, a special hunt that is considered a rite of passage and requires the hunter to kill something that is hunting them.
A little while later Naru is sharpening her axe as her mother, Aruka (played by Michelle Thrush) prepares medicine for the war chief who is ill and getting worse. Although somewhat supportive of her hunting, Naru’s mother questions why she is so focused on it instead of other things. Naru simply tells her it’s because no one thinks she can do it. So we got the motivation.
Naru is then sent to get more orange totsiyaa for medicine (best translation I could find says totsiyaa means flower). Meanwhile we cut to some nearby mountains where the ship drops off a Predator who immediately goes invisible.
Hearing some commotion, Naru rushes back to her settlement where she’s told that a lion took Puhi, one of the tribe. Taabe leads a search party to find Puhi and are joined by Naru and Sarii. One of the party protests her joining by saying they don’t need a cook, but Taabe says she can join them since Naru is a good tracker and knows how to make medicine.
We cut to a quick scene of the invisible Predator hunting and skinning a snake, I guess he’s gotta work his way up to the big prey. Meanwhile, with Naru’s help, the group finds a badly injured Puhi. As the rest of the group build a stretcher, Naru feeds Puhi some of the orange totsiyaa which we learn helps by lowering body temperature and slowing blood loss.
Night falls and Taabe decides to go hunt the lion on his own as the rest of the group start to make their way back to the settlement with Puhi. A short time later Naru spots the skinned snake and the Predator’s footprint. Realizing that something bigger than a lion is out there, she tells the group she’s going back to Taabe to help him. Although they dismiss her claims, one of the group, Paaka, is sent with her just in case.
After rejoining with Taabe, the three plan on what to do about the lion problem. Naru wants to set a trap using bait but Paaka believes they should keep searching on foot. Taabe decides to go with Naru’s plan and tells her this is her kuhtaamia.
Paaka and Naru wait above on tree branches while Taabe spills some animal blood nearby. Paaka teases Naru telling her she is too afraid to use her weapon and tries to scare her by describing how dangerous a lion is. Before he can finish, the lion jumps up the tree and grabs him pulling him down. The lion then returns and prepares to attack Naru who has readied her spear.
As she backs up, she’s distracted by a roar from far away coming from the Predator. The lion jumps at her but she’s able to dodge it except she falls off the tree and gets knocked out. She wakes up back at the settlement where she’s told, by her mother, that Puhi survived and Taabe carried her home before going back out for the lion. Her mother then tries to discourage her from hunting but she doesn’t realize Naru is the main character.
Taabe returns to the settlement with the decapitated body of the lion and everyone celebrates but notably no sign of Paaka. Did he die? Does he have a family? Why doesn’t anyone care about Paaka?
The tribe celebrate and Taabe is declared the new War Chief. An angry Naru tells Taabe there is something else out there but Taabe tells her if there is, he’ll hunt it. He then refuses to let Naru go out and hunt whatever it is.
The following morning Naru is awoken by someone again aggressively shoving her with their foot. Is that how everyone was woken up before alarm clocks? As Taabe sleeps, Naru decides to go off on her own (with Sarii) to find and prove there is something else in the woods. A short time later she stumbles upon another Predator footprint and some green blood on a tree.
We cut to the Predator watching a wolf hunt a rabbit. Deciding that the wolf is a worthy opponent the Predator attacks and the two square off. Despite the Predator being camouflaged, the wolf gets a pretty good bite in, but the Predator easily wins and decapitates the wolf.
After that scene of masterful hunting, we cut to Naru unable to hunt several rabbits, continuously missing them with her throwing axe. It’s a pretty good juxtaposition between the two hunters. The Predator easily hunts and kills the wolf while Naru can’t even kill the thing the wolf was hunting.
Naru realizes the amount of time it takes to pick up the axe, after throwing it, is giving the rabbits too much time to escape. She decides to make rope out of tree fiber and tie it to her axe allowing her to throw and retrieve her axe instantly. After a few practice throws, we cut to her carrying several dead rabbits.
The following day Naru continues on her search while we see the Predator in a cave using some sort of spray to melt the skin off the wolf head. It then attaches the skull to its belt and hears the sounds of Sarii barking in the distance.
Naru finds an open field with multiple dead buffalo, just a ridiculous amount, all skinned. Near one of them, she also finds a cigar and I’m pretty sure Predators don’t smoke. We get confirmation of this when a short time later the Predator arrives at the scene and is also confused by the cigar.
Meanwhile Naru is further into the woods and falls into some quicksand. It’s a pretty tense scene as she slowly sinks and fails multiple times to pull herself out with her axe on a rope. Finally as the mud is about to swallow her whole, she succeeds in getting the axe lodged between the branches of a tree and pulls herself out.
After cleaning herself in a river, which must have taken hours, she and Sarii hear a bear a bit further down. Finding it, they sneak up and she readies her bow but her bowstring breaks alerting the bear to their presence.
The bear runs towards them but Sarii leads it away as Naru replaces her bowstring. As the bear returns, Naru shoots at the bear and I can’t tell if she missed but it doesn’t matter because the bear is not slowing down. Naru dives into the river and comes up nearby behind a beaver dam. The beat is there immediately attempting to break through and almost does until the Predator shows up.
The Predator and the bear fight with the bear getting some good hits in but ultimately the Predator wins. As Naru watches, the invisible Predator lifts the bear up into the air letting its blood wash over him like a psycho.
Naru escapes by swimming down the river as the Predator watches on. Also, Sarii is nowhere to be seen so things have gotten worse. A little while later Naru is walking through the woods and is found by four of Taabe’s hunters, led by Wasape, who were out searching for her as Taabe searches elsewhere. She tells them she found the monster, calling it a mupitsl, a monster from a children’s story.
The men laugh at her for believing in the legend and dismiss her claims. Naru tries to continue on her own but Wasape stops her, telling her they are taking her home. She refuses and the two fight. After trading a few blows, Naru wins and is told she can leave but it was a trick! Another of the group push her and Wasape clocks her in the face. Meanwhile an invisible Predator has been watching the whole thing from a nearby tree.
After tying Naru’s hands together, Wasape tells the group to take a break and another of the group, Itsee, goes off to take a shit. The remaining group hear something coming and ready their arrows. Turns out it’s several possums that they quickly kill. Wasape taunts Naru for thinking it was something else but she points out that something drew them out of hiding.
Wasape once again dismisses her worries and goes to pick up the possum carcass. Lifting one up, the group hear something buzzing and several red dots appear on Wasape. Since it’s 1719 he has no idea what they could mean and tries to swat them away. They turn out to be aiming lasers for the Predator’s spear gun and instantly kill Wasape.
The remaining men, Huupi and Ania, ready their weapons and refuse to let Naru loose from her restraints which is just the dumbest idea.
Speaking of dumb ideas, the camouflaged Predator casually wanders over to Wasape’s dead body and picks up his spears which instantly gives away his position. Unsurprisingly, Huupi shoots it with his arrows which causes the Predator to roar angrily but also gives us our first full look.
Huupi and Ania attack with the Predator immediately throwing Ania aside. Huupi dodges several swipes from the Predator’s spear/sword but is fairly quickly killed and decapitated. Ania rejoins the fight with his spear, jamming it into the Predator’s foot; essentially saying he doesn’t need a highly advanced spear/sword to win a figh- oh he’s dead now.
Meanwhile, Naru has made her way to Wasape’s body as he was holding her axe. She takes her weapon and cuts her restraints off just as the Predator turns his attention onto her. Naru runs out into a field where she finds Itsee. Has he been hiding there this whole time after his bathroom break?
The two hide in the tall weeds but don’t know that the Predator is tracking their heat signatures. Itsee readies his arrow believing he has the upper hand but Naru notices the red lasers appear on his forehead. She is able to save him in time and the two continue running through the field. The Predator catches up to Itsee cutting him in half as Naru makes it into the woods but is caught by a small beartrap.
The Predator arrives and picks up the chain attached to the bear trap telling us that he’s confused as to what it is. In the distance, the two hear some men speaking in French heading towards them, and the Predator peaces out. The men arrive with guns pointed at the trapped Naru and knock her out with the butt of the gun.
That night Naru wakes up in a wooden cage in a pretty big fur trapper’s camp. She sees the men put Sarii in a cage nearby and realizes the men are the ones who killed and skinned all the buffalo from earlier.
The cartoonishly-evil fur trapper leader sends a translator to speak with Naru who asks for her help since, it turns out, they are tracking the Predator. He tells her they believe the Predator is a hunter who is looking to kill the strongest beast around.
Naru refuses to talk causing the leader to reveal he has Taabe in a nearby cage. The trappers pull him out and the leader cuts him (not deep enough to kill him) down the chest while laughing.
The next day Naru and Taabe are tied to a tree in a field of dead trees and it’s clear they’re being used as bait. From a distance, two fur trappers keep an eye on the two but don’t realize the four men behind them on horses getting slaughtered by the Predator. The Predator kills the two men and walks onto the field heading towards Naru and Taabe.
Taabe starts to struggle but Naru tells him the Predator wants to hunt and won’t kill them if they’re tied up. She then expresses her failures and believes the Predator didn’t kill her when she stepped on the beartrap because it deemed her too weak to be considered a threat.
Taabe tells her the only reason he was able to kill the lion was because of her plan and the fact that she weakened it before falling off the tree. He basically tells her she’s a better hunter than him to encourage her. Naru responds that she doesn’t know if the monster can be killed but Taabe says “if it bleeds, we can kill it.”
The field is revealed to be full of traps as the Predator steps on a beartrap and roars out in pain. The fur trappers reveal themselves, pull on the chains of the trap causing him to fall, and toss a net over him. The men laugh at their victory but moments later the Predator gets up, throws the net aside, and just starts murdering.
It’s a great scene showing off the Predator’s technology and just how adept he is. Using throwing knives, his retractable claws, a net that cuts through the victim, and a shield with some pretty sharp edges, the Predator kills several fur trappers.
There’s also a bit of light comedy sprinkled in using the ineptitude of the trappers, for example, the Predator lets one shoot him directly in the mask which ricochets the bullet back at the shooter, killing him.
Meanwhile, Naru uses a bear trap to cut through her and Taabe’s restraints, freeing them. Taabe goes to find some horses while Naru heads back to the trapper’s camp to get Sarii.
Several more fur trappers, including the leader, show up with guns and start firing at the Predator. Instead of engaging them, he presses a few buttons on his wrist gauntlet, which if you’ve seen some other Predator movies you know this means bombs.
The Predator runs off hopping from tree to tree while the trappers approach the gauntlet he left behind. Three small discs fly out of it and blow up.
At the trapper’s camp, three remaining trappers are about to kill Sarii but Naru arrives just in time to save her. In a pretty impressive scene, she fights and kills three trappers using knives and her axe.
A little while later as Naru tends to her wounds, the translator from earlier returns and is now missing a foot due to one of the Predator’s gadgets which is still embedded in his leg. He offers to show Naru how to use a gun if she agrees to treat his wounds.
After he explains how the gun works, Naru gives him some orange totsiyaa to help with the pain but also causes him to feel cold. The two hear the Predator approaching and Naru hides while the translator pretends to be dead. Watching from behind a tree, Naru realizes the orange totsiyaa has dropped the translator’s body temperature enough to trick the Predator into thinking he’s actually dead.
The Predator starts to walk away but steps on the translator’s leg causing him to scream out in pain, so he’s killed. A barking Sarii then arrives leading the Predator to aim his lasers at her. Just as he’s about to fire, a horse-riding Taabe arrives and knocks the Predator’s mask off with a spear to the face.
Naru sees the targeting lasers are coming from the mask and, when firing, the spears always end up wherever the lasers are aiming, basically they’re homing spears. She then attempts to use the gun but it doesn’t go off so she resorts to screaming to get the Predator’s attention.
This gives Taabe an opening, launching himself over the Predator and using one of the Predator’s spears to pierce him. By the way, we never see how Taabe got the Predator’s spear so I just have to assume he picked it up while leaving the field of dead trees.
Taabe continues to fight the Predator as Naru tries to fill the gun with gun powder again. The Predator then cheats and goes invisible. Naru tells Taabe that they should leave but Taabe hears the Predator behind him and tells her to run.
The Predator stabs Taabe through the chest and sets his sights on Naru but Taabe stabs him in the leg with the wolf skull. The Predator turns around and kills Taabe for good but when turning back towards Naru, she’s pulled a Batman and is now gone.
A few hours later, Naru and Sarii are by the river and they spot the fur trapper leader. Naru pulls out the Predator’s gadget she extracted from the translator’s leg and devises a plan. Moments later she runs up to the fur trapper leader and knocks him out with a rock.
That night he wakes up by a fire and discovers that Naru has cut his leg off. He spots her sitting by the fire and also spots a gun. While yelling at her, he crawls towards the gun as Naru eats some orange totsiyaa. It turns out this is part of her plan.
His yelling has attracted the attention of the Predator who will now see him as a threat since he is holding a gun. With the orange totsiyaa, the Predator won’t notice Naru and will go for the trapper leader giving her an opportunity to attack.
Naru shoots off the Predator’s mask although she does wait until after he kills the trapper leader. Picking up the mask, she runs off as the Predator wonders what the fuck just happened.
A short time later as snow starts to fall, Naru ties several wooden spikes to trees and carefully places the Predator mask in-between several boulders. Following a blood trail, the Predator arrives and finds the foot of the trapper leader just lying there. It’s the most ‘this is a trap’ trap I’ve ever seen.
Just above him, Naru watches him from the branches and jumps down with her axe, stabbing him multiple times. He tosses her aside and pulls out his spear. As he throws it, Sarii runs up from behind and pushes him causing him to miss Naru.
Naru runs off with the Predator chasing after by jumping from tree to tree above her. She leads him to the trees with the wooden spikes where he impales himself and falls to the ground. Naru then runs back, picks up the Predator’s spear, and waits by a tree.
The Predator jumps over and attempts to impale Naru with his arm blades but she dodges causing him to jam them, and his arm, into the tree. Naru swings the spear around to strike but he blocks it with his shield. The force of the strike is still enough to cause his sharp-edged shield to swing around and slice off his stuck arm.
The two continue to fight with each getting a few hits in. The Predator eventually slams Naru onto the ground but, she is able to slide herself in-between two rocks preventing him from using his shield to decapitate her. As the Predator roars in her face, she rips off one of his protruding teeth and jams it into his chest.
Naru slips under the Predator’s legs and stands at a distance. She then spots Sarii holding onto her axe and she yells out a signal. Sarii runs behind the Predator distracting him long enough for Naru to run and slide between his legs while grabbing her axe in one fell swoop. Naru swipes at the Predator’s leg and then climbs onto his shoulders, tying the rope of her axe around his neck before he can throw her off.
Naru pulls on the rope and the area is revealed to be the same area where she was sinking into the mud earlier in the film. The Predator falls into the mud and immediately sinks. After a few moments, he raises from the mud with no issue, like it’s not even a problem. Sort of felt like he was taunting her for almost sinking earlier.
With no other weapons left, the Predator pulls out his spear gun and aims it at Naru who isn’t running, which should have been a pretty good indicator that this might be a trap. As his gun powers up, the Predator doesn’t see the lasers from his mask pointing at the back of his head. We then see that the place where Naru set up the Predator’s mask earlier, points directly at the space above the mud where the Predator stands now.
The Predator shoots and the spear almost reaches Naru but is pulled away since they’re locked to the laser trajectory. As the Predator realizes what happened, the spear pierces his head killing him.
Naru and Sarii return to the settlement with the Predator’s head. The pistol she used is revealed to be the ‘Raphael Adolini 1715’ pistol, the same pistol given to Danny Glover’s character at the end of Predator 2.
Naru tells the tribe they need to move to easily protected ground as there is danger nearby. The film ends with Naru taking her brother’s spot as war chief.
As the credits roll, we see drawings depicting the events of the movie but at the end, there’s a drawing depicting an extra scene that we didn’t see. This final drawing appears to happen immediately after Naru is made war chief. Naru and several members of the tribe spot something in the sky. As we pan out, we see multiple ships arriving.
Review:
Prey is great. The acting is good, I mean nothing is amazing but that’s mainly due to how the story plays out. There’s not much any actor could do better with what was given. But, the very few scenes where a character plays off another or gives emotion are well done. For example, Naru and Taabe’s mother (played by Michelle Thrush) does a great job in the silent scene after she finds out about Taabe’s death.
None of this negatively impacts the movie since it’s focused on being an action movie, and when it comes to action, Prey is great. Amber Midthunder and Dakota Beavers both have awesome fight scenes that contain very few cuts making the action smooth and showing that they did a lot of it themselves.
The story is very tightly written, almost nothing happens towards the end that hasn’t been shown or hinted at in some way during an earlier part of the movie. The wolf skull Taabe uses to buy Naru more time to run as he dies, the plan to trap the lion is the same one Naru uses at the end to bait the Predator, the orange totsiyaa (it’s a big one but still)
It does get a bit excessive for example at the beginning Naru tells Taabe not to get his bowstring wet as it might break, later in the movie she has to wet her bowstring because of the mud and that leads to it breaking when she goes up against the bear. It’s a detail that I don’t think many people would have cared about and it wouldn’t be a (very slight) issue but the movie skips a few other vital detail scenes like how did Taabe get the Predator’s spear, did the war chief die, etc.
Prey also does a great job at showing us that the Predator in this movie isn’t the highly skilled, almost indestructible type seen in other movies. This Predator is slimmer, less armored, and not the best at close-quarter combat. Despite us seeing the Predator pretty quickly kill the wolf and bear, each animal still gets a few good hits in showing us that the Predator isn’t an unstoppable killing machine.
When faced with a member of the Comanche tribe in some really well-choreographed fight scenes, the Predator is shown to not be agile and has to rely on his tech to win. He also falls for several traps throughout the movie and when his enemies are agile he can barely touch them. When Taabe faces off with the Predator, he’s dashing in and out, shooting arrows, retrieving the arrow, and shooting again without issue until the Predator camouflages.
I don’t know a lot about the Predator lore but I’m guessing the Predator we see in this movie is on its first hunt which is why is starts out hunting the smallest animals and builds up from there.
There’s not a lot to dislike about this movie but Naru’s motivation could have been shown more effectively. Yes, we know that she wants to hunt to prove herself but besides maybe two hunters making some comments, everyone else shown is somewhat supportive. Taabe is totally onboard with Naru hunting and her mother tries to discourage her but never tells her outright or demands that she stop.
The only other negative I can see some people having is if you’ve seen other Predator movies you know how some hinted at scenes are going to play out. The moment you hear Naru say the totsiyaa cools the blood, you know she’s going to use it later against the Predator. This added with the heavy foreshadowing makes the movie a bit more predictable than it should be, nonetheless it’s still entertaining and there are a few subversions.
Overall, I highly recommend giving Prey a watch that is exclusive on Hulu in the US and Disney+ elsewhere. It’s a great addition to the Predator franchise and gives hope about its future of it. Here’s to hoping they visit a new time period in every film.
Also Sarii is great.
Cast IMDB