The Predator

Shane Black’s weakest film as a director (by a mile), The Predator details the chaos and violence that ensues after the title creature arrives on our planet – with the narrative following several characters, including a wacky, mismatched band of prisoners (led by Boyd Holbrook’s Quinn McKenna), as they’re forced to battle the fierce creature. It’s Black’s heavy reliance on quirky figures that immediately (and thoroughly) sinks The Predator, as the movie suffers from a palpable lack of compelling protagonists that grows more and more problematic as time progresses – with the viewer’s ongoing efforts at working up interest in or sympathy for the central characters’ exploits, to an increasingly distressing extent, falling disastrously flat. (And it doesn’t help, certainly, that Holbrook delivers as hopelessly bland and uncharismatic a lead performance as one could possibly envision.) The movie’s hands-off atmosphere is compounded by a narrative almost entirely devoid of momentum, as Black offers up a series of ineffective plot strands that, though they eventually do converge, generally remain unable to make a positive impact. It’s clear, too, that the paucity of compelling sequences perpetuates The Predator‘s aggressively tedious vibe; though there are one or two engaging moments (eg the predator attacks and kills a room full of scientists), the bulk of the picture consists of misguided, underwhelming interludes that exacerbate the frustratingly uninvolving feel (and it doesn’t help, either, that much of the movie transpires in oppressive darkness). The endless climax ultimately ensures that the whole thing concludes on a seriously lackluster note, which is a shame, certainly, given the inherent potential of a Shane Black-helmed, R-rated return to the series’ violent roots.

*1/2 out of ****