Predator: Badlands Review - The Hunter Learns to Feel
At its best, the Predator franchise has always been about fear, survival, and the threat of the alien-other. With Predator: Badlands, director Dan Trachtenberg takes those familiar motifs – and turns them inward. What emerges is a film less about human prey and more about an alien predator coming of age. Approaching the heights of his previous film Prey, it ventures into bold territory and remains one of the more intriguing genre entries of the year.
The story introduces us to Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), a Predator outcast who is told by his clan he is weak – a “runt” unworthy of hunting and honor. In desperation to prove himself, he accepts a mission to the savage planet Genna, home of the monstrous Kalisk. There, he encounters Thia (Elle Fanning) – a dismembered android from the human corporation Weyland-Yutani, desperate to reunite with her severed bodies and find her place in the universe. Their unlikely partnership becomes the spine of the film: a by-the-book apex hunter learning to cooperate with a synthetic being who discovers empathy – not as weakness, but as survival strategy.
This shift of focus – from human hunted to Predator aspirant – is the film’s most daring move. Trachtenberg and co-writer Patrick Aison reshape the franchise’s lens: instead of the familiar human-in-jungle scenario, we get the Predator’s own perspective. As an alien-hunter learning the value of partnership – not trophies – Dek’s journey becomes unexpectedly emotional. Thia, though synthetic, becomes the emotional catalyst: she reminds Dek that cooperation wins where solitary rage fails.
Fanning delivers a standout performance – and a delightfully peculiar one. As a probe of identity, she gives Thia both mechanical detachment and emergent warmth. Her physical design may be part horror, part visual novelty (at one point, we get to see her torso and legs operate separately!), but her emotional resonance is real. The film wouldn’t work without her presence.
The visuals serve this odd pairing beautifully. Trachtenberg uses wide vistas and violent Predator-versus-monster encounters to remind us that the Predator is still a force to be reckoned with. Yet the story invites us to feel the cost of that reckoning. The cinematography (Jeff Cutter) and score (Sarah Schachner & Benjamin Wallfisch) combine to ground the film in physical weight and mythic texture.
At its heart, however, Badlands is about transformation – the Predator who finds meaning in connection. The film repeatedly returns to the notion of strength through unity: wolves survive by pack, Predators by honor, synthetics by design – and what happens when those orders converge? In a way, the film asks: what is the trophy worth if you have no one to show it to?
If earlier Predator films thrived on unrelenting dread and cat-and-mouse tension, this version invites more contemplation – and perhaps fewer chills, though it’s clear from the outset that chills aren’t the point this time around. The switch from isolationist hunt to symbiotic mission is compelling yet not always elegant. But what matters, ultimately, is that Predator: Badlands trusts its characters. It trusts that cooperation and empathy can exist in a franchise built on lone hunters and alien blood. And in doing so, it pays tribute to what Trachtenberg did in Prey – a genre film that was fierce and thoughtful in equal measure. The difference here is increased ambition.
If you like your Predators ruthless, this may not be the film you expected. But if you’re willing to journey into the Badlands alongside an outcast and an android, you’ll find something rare: a sci-fi action film with heart. It might not quite reach the heights of Prey, but it’s close – and that in itself is a triumph. Whether what we get next from the Alien/Predator franchise is a second season of Alien: Earth, another standalone Predator film from Dan Trachtenberg, or something else entirely, I’m now more confident than ever that this franchise is in good hands.
In the end, Predator: Badlands reminds us that a Predator, both the alien and the franchise named for it, can learn, and it offers the Predator franchise not just a new chapter, but new possibilities.