Back to Earth with a hard knock as Alasdair Stuart follows The Predator as we prepare for the next movie in the Predator franchise…

Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) is the sole survival of a clash between a predator and a US Army hostage retrieval mission. Arrested by government agent Will Traeger (Sterling K. Brown) part of the Project monitoring the Predators’ presence on Earth, Quinn goes on the run with his autistic son (Jacob Tremblay), biologist Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn) and a group of psychologically disturbed veterans as multiple factions come after him.

On paper, this was a slam dunk. It’s another fun group of misfits and another great cast, especially the always fun Brown and Holbrook. It builds on the foundation established in the second movie that the government knows the Predators are here. It’s even written and directed by the almost always excellent Shane Black, who played Hawkins in the original. What could go wrong, right?

Turns out, everything.

The central idea, that the Predators obsessively improve themselves with the DNA of their foes is fun and dives further into the hypocrisy of their culture. The idea that Rory (Jacob Tremblay who is excellent despite being given almost nothing to do) is viewed as a superhuman by them because of his autism is… honestly I don’t know where to start. I can see the intention here, trying to find a way to explore autism honestly and in a positive light. But given how many ‘autistic super detective’ shows were around at the time and how badly it’s handled here, it’s a vastly ill-advised choice handled in a deeply offensive way.

Then there’s that cast, and how little is done with them and, worse, how much they reflect the same approach. Autism is a superpower here. Mental illness and psychological damage is presented in a way that could, just, barely, be seen as empowering but instead feels like feeding a group of damaged people into a meatgrinder to make an audience that doesn’t care feel something. There are no surprise deaths in a movie like this but in this case there’s almost no rollercoaster-like fun to it either.

Finally, there’s the third act. The script tries a dozen different things and, its dismal approach to mental health aside, does well up until the third act. The original involved an entirely different action sequence and an entirely different location, as well as at least one character entirely cut from the final movie. What we get instead looks, and feels, cobbled together and leads to an ending which is both confoundingly stupid and somehow the least stupid option considered. It’s such a shame, especially given the pedigree of everyone involved. But this is, by a long way, the worst movie in the franchise.

Verdict: Incoherent, insulting and empty. 3/10