The Predator in 2018 - Review

The fifth installment of the Predator franchise, simply titled “The Predator”, dominated the box office of this weekend. But, it didn’t dominate its own structural narrative.  

Let’s talk about what this movie does well. It’s an action romp with plenty of violence and funny lines. If all you want is a way to kill a few hours, then go see The Predator. It looks superb.  

Some of the best movies of all time seem to be the ones that blur the lines between genres. Often times, filmmakers decide to take this gigantic step for a film to work on multiple levels.

“The Predator” does the opposite of that. It can’t decide what movie it wants to be. Part of the time, it is a horror bloodfest with the only thing stopping the predator from a waltz through slasher lane is a bigger, bloodier predator.

It dabbles somewhat well into ensemble territory with a diverse cast of capable actors such as Olivia Munn, Boyd Holbrook and Keegan Michael Key. This lends itself more to the “dirty several” type of ensemble-filmmaking that we are beginning to see more of thanks to large tentpole comic book movies.  

It is a bit of a shock to see Key still act as the comedic relief, only because of the more diverse roles he has had in the past few years. The movie acting like a comedy is the closest thing working but the back and forth of genre jumping isn’t quite being pulled off in the way that was intended.

The film absolutely deserves a mountain of credit for having a main character who is on the autism spectrum. Young actor Jacob Tremblay portraying Holbrook’s son is a credit to both the struggle and greatness that high-functioning children and their families go through. The movie successfully shows the skills and use of a talented individual.  But as if that wasn’t hard enough, they also had that damn predator to deal with.

In many aspects, it’s still writer-director Shane Black doing what he was hired to do. He checks all the boxes. Brutal situations bumped up against quippy dialogue set during a major holiday.  It just didn’t work here. It worked in “The Nice Guys.” Oh boy, did it work in “The Nice Guys.”

Side note-Great flick.

The idea sounds great on paper. Black played a minor role in the first Predator movie with an option to rewrite the script. He passed on it.

We seem to find ourselves once again in a situation of claiming to move forward in cinema, but really it’s just mad mountain of lazy references and campy dialogue that we think will work because the classic one-liners of yesteryear were also campy.

We keep trying to use the classics to move forward, but the movement is at the very most, lateral.

MNA Rating: is 2.5 out of 5 pointless easter eggs.

Chad Sanders

Founder, movienightautopsy.com

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