Predators: Suspenseful Enough But Hollow

If nothing else, Nimród Antel's 2010 standalone sequel Predators spits out what is by far the most uncomfortable line of dialogue I've heard in a movie. I don't want to repeat it, nor do I have to for your sake - you'll know it when you hear it and probably find yourself caught somewhere between laughing and crying. That's a messy trophy for a movie like this to take, and I wanted to talk about it because, unfortunately, Predators doesn't have many other claims to fame. I can frame it in a dimly positive light for its committed back-to-the-basics storytelling tactics, but there comes a point where one can be too fundamental. After all, the kiddie pool can be a lot of fun in the proper context, but if you try to dive into it, that's going to hurt - a lot. Anywhere else, if I turned the news on and heard that someone was illegally dropping even the worst of people into a game preserve to be hunted by some extraterrestrial beings, I'd be concerned. And maybe this is cold of me to say, but when the potential prey don't even act like people, I warm up to the idea just a little bit.

If you like sugary energy drinks, then Predators is for you. This movie drops us straight into the action, and I mean that literally. It opens in free fall as Royce, our main protagonist, hurtles downwards toward a mysterious jungle without so much as any hint of a prologue to speak of. I have mixed feelings about this, which are more negative and contrary than not. Others have been dropped into this mysterious jungle with Royce by who knows who - trained killers who comprise a diverse group from diverse places. Royce himself is a mercenary and not much more. Isabelle is an Israeli sniper who's probably too beautiful to exist in her capacity outside of an action movie. Nikolai, a Russian with a massive rotary machine gun, is a less-than-subtle reference to the original film. And so on. Predators becomes exciting quickly, but a cast this large lends itself to pigeonholing. No single character in this movie seems like a person as much as they do a vague comic book stereotype defined by their personal weapon of choice.

I'll freely admit that the Predator franchise is not known for its depth, but it has for decades raised eyebrows with a well-above-average grasp of suspense, and Predators is no exception when at its best. Still, the first third of this movie may be the only part of it that genuinely understands the assignment. From weird anomalies in the magnetism of wherever our motley crew may be, to a sun that refuses to move in the sky, to eerie and empty metal cages scattered around a silent jungle, Predators leaves us hanging for an ample time, as it should. Even if we, as the audience, know what's out there waiting for our cast of killers, it's impossible to know what exactly will happen, other than nothing good. But if you're a pessimist expecting the rest of this movie to be a mess, you're one step ahead. Most movies have their narrative ups and downs, like a road map through mountains and valleys to where they want their story to end up, but the weird thing about Predators is that it very often doesn't - that's not a good thing. It's one suspenseful sequence after another without much of a larger purpose tying them together, other than find out what's happening to us, a question we already know the answer to. I'd call this movie a story, but it doesn't strictly speaking act like one.

The action in this movie is solid, and the suspense is excellent, so it's a shame that Predators rarely seems to be anything more than a picture of occasionally excellent filmmaking prowess painted with familiar brushes and stale paint. While what little Predators does right leaves its mark, the space this movie carves out for its story is virtually nonexistent. It contains a twist in its final third, but when your story has been treading water for so long, twists such as these are less of a surprise and more of a desperate bid for relevance that's too little, too late. There's very little to say about this movie that I haven't already said about other lackluster action sequels and reboots, and Predators doesn't take many trophies in my book. This is one hunting trip it wouldn't kill you to miss.

Predators ends on a cliffhanger, and while I won't go so far as to say that this sounds less like an unkept promise and more like a hollow threat, I'd be lying if I said I wanted to see more of this. Predators is keenly knowledgeable when it comes to staging action and suspense, but it doesn't know how to be anything more when its story demands it or even when it is occasionally apparent that it really, really wants to. Like the original movie, it works more on the level of a relatively grounded sci-fi experience than anything else, and this is a problem when it needs to pick up a couple of dimensions. What little character drama this movie cooks up is flat and uninspiring. Predators has only one mask, and while it wears it well, it doesn't know how to take it off right, if you will. It tries to be surprising, but when it can't figure out how to properly build towards its reveals, it unintentionally ends up feeling as though it's grasping at straws out of some desperate need to be liked. And between its unoriginality and indecision, it's too nervous to take the necessary risks to make that happen.

Predators - 5/10

Proverbs 13:20