Predator: Badlands [2025]
“I am prey to none!”
Trachtenberg is back… Again. Not only did he direct Predator: Killer of Killers [an animated anthology that released in June], he loves the franchise so much that he’s decided the year of our lord 2025 needed a second helping of mandible mawed mayhem in the form of his newest entry: Predator: Badlands. This marks dear Dan’s third foray into the franchise and, for me, his weakest yet by far. If you’re a fan of the franchise, this will likely scratch an itch for you. If you’re not, or on the fence, look elsewhere. While Badlands isn’t all bad, not all of what it wants to do lands either.
Yautja are a proud and fierce race of creatures, their worthiness determined by the prizes they claim in hunts and battle. Born a runt, Dek struggles to find his place in this warrior-dominated society and moves to take on the most dangerous of all things to prove himself: An unkillable creature known as the "Kalisk”.
First, a rant on the franchise as a whole:
The Predator series is something I’ve long struggled with conceptually. I have mostly nice things to say about the two newest films [both Trachtenberg’s], and the original is certainly a classic [whether that’s by merit or satire doesn’t really matter], but the series as a whole has always left me somewhat wanting. The Yautja premise is cool on paper… But is executed in such an intensely lame way that I’m not sure how we’ve gotten behind the Predator franchise for so long. Yes, it’s neat to have a deeply honor-bound and combat-driven race of alien creatures that hunt down the most dangerous beings in any given situation. Yes, their physical design is cool. Yes, it’s neat and interesting to imagine them in many-a historical or fantastical situation, and they make for a nearly unlimited well of fanfic because of this. It’s all cool and good, but where the whole premise falls apart for me is that the Yautja are SO often killed by things that are either incredibly stupid, or tricked by their own technology in ways that don’t make any sense, that it’s difficult to really think of them as the “killer of killers” the franchise wants us to believe they are.
Trachtenberg himself has one of the most guilty moments of this, with the ending of Prey being so incredibly dumb that it made both my partner and I laugh out loud while watching it back in 2022. Add on the fact that while yes, it is cool that their culture revolves around hunting the most dangerous creatures across the universe, it is not cool that they do so with hyper-advanced technology. Is the tech itself cool? Yes, absolutely. Is it terribly interesting if I challenge a tiger or a shark or something equally dangerous on Earth with a homing plasma canon, a cloak, and adamantine razor claws… No, not particularly. Of course an animal [or even an armed person] is going to lose to a being that’s trained all its life to kill and also wields tech like that… Just kidding, for whatever reason the Yautja lose in these fights all across the franchise.
[As a sidebar, I think this is what made the AvP spinoffs very cool… At least in concept. The Xenomorphs are a race equally ferocious and violently advanced enough to merit the use of this kind of tech to even the playing field. It’s also, incidentally, one of the parts of Badlands that does mostly work.]
So, between the fact that the title characters themselves always seem to die in the lamest, least intelligent ways possible, and that they use some of scifi’s more advanced technology to hunt things like WWII fighter planes [looking at you Killer of Killers] and fail to succeed… I just don’t think the Predator mythos is all that interesting. Give me more things like the bear scene from Prey and I’ll start taking these guys more seriously… Just be sure to omit the entire ending of that film as well.
Rant over.
As I mentioned above, director Dan Trachtenberg really shows his affinity for the Hellraiser franchise here by releasing his second feature-length Predator film this year in Badlands. While that’s an entirely unfair comparison in terms of overall quality, it’s still worth mentioning because it is very goofy thing to see happen. What is a fair comparison, however, is saying that what both of 2005’s Hellraiser releases and this film have in common is that they’re all at their best when the characters shut up and just let the visuals do the talking. The effects in Badlands look mostly great throughout and, with the science-fiction genre having something of a history in the category, I hope they get some attention come awards season. Environments are interesting, lush, and dangerous, while creatures are gooey, hard, sharp, and mean in ways that make you want to know more about them… While also keeping a safe distance. As with most things this film has to offer however, the great visuals are offset by the stilted and chunky fight choreography. Fortunately this mostly comes out in combats between characters of like races, and doesn’t feel as apparent when facing off with some of the larger monsters encountered throughout the film, but it’s still very distracting. While not all of the engagements are edge-of-your-seat winners, the fights with the important creatures certainly are, and it’s clear where most of the attention of the creators went, because these moments truly shine. Unfortunately, these shimmering fragments comprise only a handful of minutes out of what I would have sworn to you was a 2+ hour movie [It isn’t, it’s only 1:47… But goodness me did it feel long]… And that’s really because of the awful dialogue.
During nearly any conversational scene, Badlands’ DNA becomes horrifically apparent and you couldn’t be blamed for having traumatic flashbacks of your least favorite buddy-cops from films past. Not only is the writing itself kind of a goofy, ham-fisted mess in terms of storytelling, but the film simply cannot help itself but to crack a joke in almost every available second of silence between already forced jokes… And only one of them is funny during the entire film [though it was quite funny so, I’ll give it that]. At 1:47 long, I think that Badlands would have been much stronger by shortening itself down to the golden 1:40 mark, and doing away with a ton of the sillier bits. Not every movie needs comedic relief, and not every serious character has to be offset by a funny one. You can tell a deep and meaningful story about found families and societal expectations with a scifi/action backdrop without needing to make the audience laugh. Take note Zach Cregger… Actually wait, don’t do that, because this suffers from the same nonsense your movies do, this one was just a lot cringier.
In adding this image to break up my walls of text, I realize that I’m not actually sure this weapon ever gets used in the film… So why spend the time showing it to me? Rude.
Beyond the visual effects and creativity of some of the film’s creatures, it’s difficult to come up with many accolades for Badlands, and I’m genuinely confused at the popularity its gaining with online review sights. There’s just… Not much to it. I guess it’s interesting that it canonically ties together two beloved franchises in a modern film series [A fact that was so banal that it didn’t even really register for me until sitting here trying to figure out how to write a second section of this review]. I also guess that setting the film in an environment as outwardly hostile as Genna makes the aforementioned overpowered tech issue less of an annoyance… But that’s kinda it. Characters still die to very stupid things, the story itself is still incredibly simple and horrifically convenient, and you walk away from this entry with exactly as much as any of the others, if even a little less…
I do think that, if you’re a diehard fan of the Predator franchise in general, this is a movie that’s going to be up your alley just like the rest of them, and might even come out as one of your more favorites for it’s neat gadgets, great visuals, and cool monster fights… But there’s nothing on display here that a non-fan couldn’t get better from somewhere else. Want good sci-fi drama? Go watch Andor. If you think tech and aliens are cool, check out Upgrade or Arrival, or even just the classics in Alien and Aliens. If monsters and action are your thing, Godzilla Minus One was not my favorite, but did win an Oscar, or hell even something like The Thing, The Descent, or even Underwater might suffice [God, please forgive me for talking about The Thing in the same sentence as non-masterpieces🙏]. I don’t know, there’s just nothing that Predator: Badlands really has to offer that something else doesn’t give either more of, or give in a higher quality sort of way, save for the two major fights with the main focus monster of the film, the Kalisk [Yes, that joke is funny twice, thank you for asking].
Despite all of this, and my grumblings about the franchise’s weirdnesses as a whole, I’m still excited by what Trachtenberg is doing with the Yautja in a general sense, and I’ll certainly watch whatever it is he puts out next. So far he hasn’t done anything that even remotely dims his first film, 10 Cloverfield Lane, but I like enough of what I see hidden behind the more annoying parts of his Predator films to still be interested. If you like the dread-bedecked, crab-mouthed, tech-focused action you’ve seen before from this franchise, you’ll find exactly what you want in this one. If you want anything more than what you’ve already seen a thousand times, you do not need to spend even a single minute more thinking about this film or what it [lacks] has to offer. For me, I think this is likely to end up near the upper-middle of the bottom of my list on the year; a place where films I forget almost entirely about tend to lie — not bad enough to make the bottom 20, not good enough to be remembered and outclassed by things better, just a place where the stuff I don’t remember watching sifts and rests.
Of all the films released in 2025, two of them were Predator, and one of them was Predator: Badlands.
