Birth of a monster
Cert 15 ★★★★
The Predator, the overstuffed previous movie in this franchise, offered snipers, government agents, space dogs and a truckful of deranged military prisoners.
Thankfully, the fifth (or seventh if we include the Alien mash-ups) is a far simpler affair.
Here director Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane) delivers the visceral thrills of a survival movie by going back to the template of the 1987 original.
We’re in North America in the year 1719 following an ingenious and very acrobatic young Comanche woman called Naru (Amber Midthunder). Desperate to become a hunter, she has retooled her foraging axe as a sort of boomerang tomahawk which she can return to her hand with a leather rope.
While the menfolk scoff, it’s Naru who notices something is afoot when a cougar runs off before devouring its prey.
Soon humankind will experience first contact with a Predator, the dreadlocked, alien big game hunters who will go on to torment Arnie two-and-a-half centuries later.
Here his gadgets aren’t quite so daunting. His helmet looks like a skull and his main weapons are a sword, a crossbow and retractable claws.
Cleverly, Trachtenberg only reveals this new design halfway through the film, tempting us with splatters of blood on his cloaking device.
Unusually for this series, the script has some interest in the real world.
There’s a touch of The Revenant in a great action sequence set in a French trappers’ camp. And did you know that indigenous Americans used toothbrushes and hunted with dogs?
The brutal action scenes are slickly choreographed, the performances are excellent and it’s beautifully shot and scored.
Older viewers may miss Arnie’s quips but this is still the most effective Predator flick since the first one.
We have the visceral thrills of a survival movie as we go right back to 1719