THE PREDATOR

The Predator (2018)

Grade: 3/10

Starring: Boyd Holbrook, Jacob Tremblay, Olivia Munn, Sterling K. Brown, Trevante Rhodes, Keegan-Michael Key, Thomas Jane, Augusto Aguilera, Yvonne Stravhoski and Alfie Allen

Rated R for strong gory violence and language

Wow. Even in a time when just about every other movie that comes out is an underwhelming sequel, reboot, or remake that doesn't do its original source material justice, that was bad. The Predator, the fourth film in the loosely-connected series that began with the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger classic Predator, is dead-on-arrival, an uninspired, lazy, unconvincing and feeble exercise in plotting, characterization, and direction. After a semi-inspiring opening, the movie falls apart fast; it couldn’t have been more than 20 minutes into this movie that my mouth was hanging open in disbelief. I can’t remember all the worst movies I’ve seen in theaters in recent years—Pixels, Suicide Squad, Warcraft, Independency Day: Resurgence, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom come to mind—but this is down there with them.

Co-written and directed by Shane Black, one of the stars of the original (the nerdy, joke-cracking Hawkins, who was the main cast’s first victim in 1987), The Predator begins with a spaceship chase through the cosmos. The larger ship damages the smaller and sends it hurtling toward Earth. The crashing ship’s trajectory interrupts a cartel bust by a couple of super-special-Ops troopers, including sniper Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook of Logan). The beastie inside the ship makes quick work of McKenna’s two cohorts, but he manages to injure it with its own armband cannon, and makes off with the other gear he can find, including its high-tech, infrared-vision helmet. Knowing he’ll be busted soon by suits ready to “disavow” him and lock him away, McKenna mails the salvaged predator suit parts to the home of his estranged son (Jacob Tremblay, of Room) and wife (Yvonne Strahovski of The Handmaid’s Tale) to keep them out of government hands.

The predator’s crashed ship is raided by government/military types, and the alien itself ends up in a lab being gawked over by Traeger, a glory-hound federal agent (Sterling K. Brown), and Dr. Brackett, an alien scientist/enthusiast (Olivia Munn). Meanwhile, after an interrogation, McKenna is put on a bus with some other burn-outs headed for a military prison. But when the predator breaks lose and goes on a rampage, McKenna and his Con Air-style group of ragtag misfits take over their bus, and head for McKenna's home, where his young, on-the-spectrum son has accidentally activated the predator gear that came in the mail. It soon becomes the belief of Traeger, Brackett and McKenna that the predator gear is summoning, or at least providing a tracking signal for, another, more dangerous predator.

Now that doesn’t sound too bad, right? Well, it’s hard to believe this movie came from one of the stars of the beloved original, because none of the above is done with any conviction at all. Scenes are lazily written and developed. The actors are either trying too hard for this lousy material or not giving a crap, and even for an action movie, the central dynamics (McKenna’s care for his son, the alien expert’s interest in the predator, the ragtag misfits) are outrageously unconvincing. While this movie’s throwback to the classic “Get to the choppa” line gave me a little bit of a chuckle, the updated iteration of another iconic line is delivered so blandly it made me think Olivia Munn didn’t want to say it on camera, but was contractually obligated. Even the special effects are underwhelming. Maybe it’s because we didn’t see much of the unmasked predator in the other films (including 2004’s mediocre Alien vs. Predator), but after a couple long looks at the predator who breaks out of the lab, I started wondering if it had always been that unimpressive.

I hope the actors listed in my obligatory “starring” section above got paid a lot for their efforts, because some of them are or have been associated with some pretty decent works in recent years, and they just embarrassed themselves. Holbrook gets the most screen-time and therefore has at least a modicum of personality, but he’s basically playing the hothead he played in Logan, minus the hint of sleazy menace (plus, he and Strahovski combine to play perhaps the least-convincing parents/estranged couple in the history of movies or TV). I’ll give Tremblay a pass, because he’s just a kid, but most of the other actors should take their paychecks and never look back. Munn has a couple moments where she’s trying, but otherwise mostly looks nonplussed by the lameness of the script. Sterling K. Brown (recently in high-bar fare such as The People vs. OJ Simpson, This is Us, and Black Panther) is slumming here, so at least he looks like he’s having a reasonably good time playing the obligatory human baddie. It’s McKenna’s Con Air/Suicide Squad-inspired ragtag crew that are the real problem, though. The great comedian Keegan-Michael Key is grating, but at least he cracks a few Hawkins-worth jokes in his twitchy portrayal of a loony, and Trevante Rhodes parlays his notable charisma into a decent death scene. But the group as a whole are an embarrassment, a disastrously-written attempt to capture the ragtag-crew fun that was prevalent in ‘80s hits (the squad in the original Predator, the crew from Aliens). Thomas Jane and Augusto Aguilera, in particular, veer back and forth between I’m-embarrassed-for-you and what-the-hell-are-you-even-doing levels of badness. I assume money, along with the hope that maybe this known franchise property would take off (spoiler: it hasn’t, and it won’t) got these actors involved, but all of them should fire their agents. 

Yeah, this was close to a complete disaster of a movie. The obligatory third-act action has a couple thrills, but they’re mild and the un-special special effects don’t help (possibly the only moment that jumped out as a “hey, cool!” moment was when an especially large predator crushed another one’s skull). Late attempts to conjure sentiment for those who were killed off and plug a sequel only prolong the viewer’s agony.

Bottom Line

This was bad. I don’t remember being so jaw-droppingly-shocked at a movie’s transparent awfulness—and occasionally laughing aloud at its stupidity—in the theater since Suicide Squad (if a movie is mentioned in the same breath as that movie, that’s not a good thing). Other than the barest action-movie thrills, The Predator offers nothing of value (and even those thrills are muted by the mind-numbing stupidity of what’s come before). If you love the original Predator, go re-watch it (I watched it on HBOGO this week). You’ll be better served. Sitting through this was an ordeal.

The Predator (2018)

Directed by Shane Black

Screenplay by Shane Black and Frank Dekker

Based on Characters Created by Jim Thomas and John Thomas

Rated R

Length: 1 hour, 47 minutes