prey | the m0vie blog

New Escapist Column! On “Prey” and “Predator” as Postcolonial Horrors…

Posted on August 5, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. It’s a big weekend for media releases, but the weekend’s best new release is Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey, a sequel to the science-fiction action classic Predator. So it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at what makes Prey such a satisfying sequel.

The original Predator is a postcolonial horror movie. It is a film about a foreign intervention that goes horribly astray when an elite commando unit find themselves hunted while on the wrong side of the border in Central America. Predator evokes contemporary anxieties over Vietnam, but also about American foreign intervention more broadly. Prey is a worthy follow-up to this, expanding and deepening the theme by setting the story on the American frontier and focusing on an indigenous protagonist.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: amber midthunder, dan trachtenberg, horror, postcolonialism, predator, prey, the predator, thriller | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! “Prey is Worthy of the Predator Brand”

Posted on August 4, 2022 by Darren

I’m thrilled to be launching movie reviews on The Escapist. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be joining a set of contributors in adding these reviews to the channel. For the moment, I’m honoured to contribute a three-minute film review of Prey, which is streaming on Hulu from tomorrow.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: amber midthunder, dan trachtenberg, escapist, film, Movie, predator, prey, review, the escapist | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: Voyager – Prey (Review)

Posted on April 7, 2017 by Darren

Prey is a fantastic piece of television, and stands as one of the best standalone episodes of the fourth season of Star Trek: Voyager.

It is an episode built around a very simple premise, pitting two of Voyager‘s more memorable alien creations against one another and throwing a nice character arc into the midst of this epic conflict. Prey is an exciting thriller built around the established characteristics of both the Hirogen and Species 8472, using two very distinctive cultures to tell a compelling and engaging story with the regular cast thrown into the fray. “Lone Hirogen hunter pursues lost member of Species 8472” is a great hook for an episode.

Here come the big guns.

However, Prey goes even further than that. The basic plot is intriguing on its own terms, but Prey cleverly grounds the story in what we know about these characters and their dynamic. As much as Voyager is caught in the crossfire of this horrific situation, the crew are also forced to make tough decisions. How will Janeway react to a wounded member of a hostile (and nigh-invulnerable) species? How will Seven of Nine respond when asked to save the life of a creature that participated in a brutal war with the Borg Collective?

This is intriguing stuff, largely anchored in what the audience already knows of the characters and delivered with top-notch production values and a great sense of pacing. Prey is an episode that plays to all the strengths of the fourth season, from the appeal of the Hirogen and Species 8472 through to the chemistry between Kate Mulgrew and Jeri Ryan.