Credit “Predator: Badlands” with at least trying to do something different. The “Predator” franchise has always followed a simple, blood-soaked pattern: elite warriors turned prey, their strength and weapons useless against the ultimate hunter. Soldiers, cops, convicts—none are spared. Even Dan Trachtenberg’s breakout “Prey” in 2022, though refreshingly grounded in a Comanche setting, largely honored the same formula.
Inventively, “Predator: Badlands,” also directed and co-conceived by Trachtenberg, flips that paradigm, placing the Predator itself at the center for the first time. Yet for all its conceptual daring, the film still circles familiar territory, proving that even evolution can feel cyclical.
READ MORE: 21 November Films To See: ‘Die My Love,’ ‘Jay Kelly,’ ‘Hamnet,’ ‘Knives Out 3’ & More
Set in the far future and loosely tied to the “Alien” mythos through the Weyland-Yutani bioweapons division, “Badlands” follows Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), a young Yautja alien outcast desperate to prove his worth. In his clan, weakness is intolerable and failure fatal. Overshadowed by his alpha brother Kwei and humiliated by his merciless father, Dek defies his bloodline by venturing to a savage, uncharted world to slay the Kalisk—a mythic beast said to be unkillable.
The planet itself is a nightmare: corrosive storms, carnivorous vegetation, and a bestiary of acid-bleeding monsters. There, Dek’s survival depends on an unlikely alliance with Thia (Elle Fanning), a half-destroyed Weyland-Yutani synthetic missing her legs but overflowing with curiosity, humor, and inconvenient empathy. Her mission: capture the Kalisk so the company can exploit its regenerative biology. Despite their differences, the two forge an uneasy partnership, bound by necessity and a shared sense of exile.
Their odd journey grows stranger with the arrival of Bud (Rohinal Ravinesh Narayan), a simian-like alien companion who rounds out their unlikely trio. Opposing them is Tessa (also Fanning), a second Wey-Yu android—Thia’s mirror opposite, cold, efficient, and programmed to obey.
Written by Patrick Aison, based on a story he co-developed with Trachtenberg, “Predator: Badlands” navigates an uneasy tonal tightrope. Half brutal sci-fi survival tale, half sentimental adventure, it oscillates between the carnage-heavy DNA of the franchise and a quasi-family-friendly sensibility closer to “The Mandalorian.” The shifts don’t always gel, but the ambition is evident.
Aison and Trachtenberg explore ideas about dominance, empathy, and the paradox of strength—how compassion can threaten a culture built on conquest. But the film’s philosophizing—especially Thia’s on-the-nose monologue about wolves and pack hierarchy, for example—spells out what might’ve been more haunting left unsaid.
A pulsing score by Sarah Schachner and Benjamin Wallfisch—both veterans of “Prey” and the Trachtenberg-produced animated spin-off “Predator: Killer of Killers”—lends sonic continuity, while the imagery gleams with alien grandeur. Trachtenberg remains a gifted action stylist; his set pieces snap with visceral intent, but the special geography of closed-quarter skirmishes sometimes gets a little chaotic.
Additionally, whereas “Prey” felt tactile and immediate—its landscapes real, its violence physical—”Badlands” feels conspicuously digital. Entire sequences play like slick animated interludes, the gooey, stringy motion of CG creatures sapping the danger from the frame. For all its technical polish, the film’s glossy unreality erodes its tension. You can feel the algorithms sweating where practical grit once lived.
Ultimately, Trachtenberg deserves recognition for ambition. He dares to evolve the series, to make a “Predator” film about weakness, empathy, and self-definition. But conceptually sharp doesn’t always mean dramatically satisfying. “Predator: Badlands” is intriguing in theory, intermittently exciting in execution, and too polished for its own good. It gestures toward mythmaking but settles for mimicry, a reflection of what made this franchise great rather than a new hunt of its own.
While it open-endedly points to a sequel, there’s little in ‘Badlands’ that screams “I must experience the continuation” of this motley crew’s story. And surely, 20th Century Studios has some kind of “Alien Vs. Predator” franchise crossover in mind that doesn’t damage the brand the way the ‘AVP’ films did in the early aughts. Whether this one has enough in the box office tank to merit a perpetuation remains to be seen.
A curious, half-successful mutation in the “Predator” bloodline, ‘Badlands’ wants to transcend the franchise’s primal instincts. Instead, it proves that sometimes survival means knowing what not to evolve. Or at least, pushing the envelope with greater execution and story conviction. [C+]
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
