The Predator (2018)

What on earth happened here? Genuinely. I sat there watching The Predator thinking someone, at some point, must have looked at the rushes and thought "yeah, this is fine." It isn't fine. It's a disaster, and a baffling one at that, because on paper this should have worked.

Shane Black was in the original 1987 film. He knows what that franchise is, what it felt like to be in that jungle, what made the creature genuinely terrifying. He also made The Nice Guys, which is a brilliantly sharp, funny, action-packed film that proves he can absolutely land that blend of wit and danger. So you'd think handing him the keys to a Predator sequel, with a proper budget behind him, would be a recipe for something special. Instead, it feels like a film that was rewritten mid-shoot, possibly several times, by several different people who couldn't agree on what they were actually making. Which, from everything that came out afterwards, isn't too far from the truth.

The tone is all over the place. It wants to be a gory creature feature, a wisecracking action comedy, a military ensemble drama, and some kind of franchise-launching blockbuster all at once, and it succeeds at none of them. The jokes don't land. The characters are paper-thin and try so desperately hard to be quirky and loveable that they end up being neither. There's a ragtag group of misfit soldiers at the centre of it and I couldn't tell you a single thing about any of them beyond their surface-level gimmicks. That's not a good sign when you're supposed to be rooting for them against one of cinema's most iconic monsters.

And speaking of the monster, the lore. Oh, the lore. Super Predators. Predadogs. And then there's the subplot involving autism being framed as the next step in human evolution, which the Predators have apparently clocked and are interested in harvesting. I had to rewind. I thought I'd misheard. I hadn't. It's as daft as it sounds, and not in a fun, silly, B-movie sort of way. It's daft in a way that suggests nobody was really in control of the ship.

The original film worked because it had mystery, tension, and grit. You didn't know what you were dealing with, and neither did the characters. There was genuine dread. Arnold Schwarzenegger covered himself in mud. Men were skinned alive and hung from trees. It was brutal and it was serious. This film has a lab scene, a Predator suit, and a punchline. The suspense is almost entirely absent, replaced by noise and chaos and a script that's constantly winking at you while simultaneously failing to give you anything worth winking about.

There are one or two decent kills scattered through it, moments where you catch a glimpse of what this could have been if someone had kept a steadier hand on the tiller. They're not enough to save it, but they stop it tipping into total write-off territory. Just. The film also wastes an enormous amount of time setting up some kind of Predator Cinematic Universe sequel that, as far as I'm aware, will never arrive. Every third scene seems to be laying pipe for a follow-up that nobody asked for, while the actual film you're watching in the present tense falls apart around it.

If you want proof that having the right people attached means absolutely nothing if the production is in disarray, here it is. Talent doesn't guarantee a good film. The Predator is proof of that. Shane Black deserves better, the franchise deserves better, and honestly, so do you. Stick with the original. It still holds up.

One and a half stars.

Rating: ★½  | Year: 2018  | Watched: 2025-04-09

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Where to watch

Watch in the UK
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