A trip offworld for Alasdair Stuart as he tracks the Yaujta’s third proper appearance (we’re not including the A vs P movies!) as we prepare for the next movie in the Predator franchise…

Royce (Adrien Brody) wakes up in freefall above a jungle landscape. His parachute opens, he lands and finds himself allied with a cartel enforcer, a Spetsnaz office, a member of the yakuza, a death row inmate, a doctor, an IDF sniper and a Sierra Leonian rebel. They’ve been kidnapped and dropped onto an alien world. Worse, a game reserve. And they’re the game.

Predators is another genius expansion of the idea and one that takes it to the same sort of bleak tone that Alien3 achieved. There’s no hope here beyond survival and that bleak tone is added to with the first hint of Yautja society’s most brutal elements. The presence of another Predator, one in captivity, is the first hint of where the series would go and it’s a neatly handled, very dark moment that every movie that follows it has touched on. Predator, or Yautja society, is fundamentally destructive and deeply hypocritical. Seeing Predators hunt each other here speaks to that.

In fact a lot of the future of the franchise is mapped out here. The concept of reserve worlds, the hypocrisy of the Predators and even Lawrence Fishburne’s cameo as a long term survivor all land very well and echo down the future entries to date.

This movie also drills down on survival as the core of the series, and flirts with some interesting, nuanced exploration of trauma based bonding. It also throws some neat elements into the mix which, again, would be explored later on. Predators with different specialities debut for the first time here and the whole idea of a ‘reserve’ world leans neatly into some of the more cosmic horror elements of the original Aliens vs Predator.

Despite this though, Predators’ weakness is the same as the original movie; it’s dated, at least as badly as its two predecessors and gives its excellent cast even less to do. Mahershala Ali especially is utterly wasted as is Alice Braga, with the added note that a movie starring a heroic IDF sniper is going to play stupidly badly in 2025.

Verdict: These issues aside, Predators has a lot to recommend it, but if you want the knockaround action of the previous two movies you’re going to be disappointed. 7/10