The Predator is probably the stupidest movie I’ve seen since spring, and that’s saying a lot (The Meg, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom). Trailers (here, here, and here) and the movie poster give away what passes for a plot. Sniper Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) runs into a predator on one of his missions, gets locked up, and meets up with a group of random nutcases. The predator kills a bunch of people, and then a bigger predator shows up. Cue vast quantities of ineffective gunfire, multitudes of explosions, and a fair dose of assorted bladed weapons.
Boyd Holbrook and Olivia Munn in The Predator. IMDb.com.
Other characters include stock biologist/scientist Dr. Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn), stock government super-secret program guy Traeger (Sterling K. Brown), and McKenna’s stock super-intelligent son Rory (Jacob Tremblay), who manages to figure out how to use the predator’s alien technology without much difficulty. Nobody turns in a particularly good performance, but that’s not entirely the actors’ faults. They’re not given characters to work with so much as standard archetypes.
Screenwriters Fred Dekker and Shane Black barely phoned this one in. Shane Black also directed, so that’s a double dose of “just don’t care” from him. This is yet another one where the story is nothing but a thin excuse to go from one action sequence to the next. There was an insulting number of “saved at the last second” bits, and government agents and soldiers in this universe are apparently trained to wait several seconds before firing whenever their weapons are pointed at someone or something integral to the plot. Weak bits are relentlessly overused. Tourette Guy’s outbursts get old real fast, but he doesn’t stop.
Spoiler Alert: Having Predator Space Dog suddenly wander into the scene for no reason besides LITERALLY puking up a weapon just when a protagonist needs it was kind of stupid the first time. It was downright insulting the second time they pulled the exact same lame stunt. End Spoiler
And since no Hollywood movie in 2018 is complete without a sanctimonious lecture, we learn that predator activity on Earth is increasing because global warming is about to make humans extinct. Predators need to get their human hunting in before we’re all gone.
Your weapons are useless against The Predator. IMDb.com.
Okay, no one goes to see The Predator in hopes of watching Shakespearean thespians enact a cinematic masterpiece. Sure, it was lame, but was it entertaining? The answer here is, sadly, no. You can only watch so many soldiers fire rifles at point blank range with no effect before it gets boring. You can only watch limbs and heads get cut off so many times before it loses all impact. Add the fact that it’s almost impossible to care about any of the characters, and you have yet another movie that feels like watching your cousin play video games in God Mode. I know, I’ve used that analogy a lot. But guess what? They’ve been making a lot of movies like that the past few years.
The Predator is too much CGI, too little plot, too many pointless firefights, and too few decent characters. And, worst of all, it’s just boring.
Overall rating: 3/10