Film Review: Predator: Badlands

Predator: Badlands
Director: Dan Trachtenberg
Lawrence Gordon Productions, Davis Entertainment, Toberoff Entertainment
In Theaters: 11.07.2025

It’s rare that Hollywood is able to breathe fresh, new life into a lifeless franchise, and it’s even more rare for established hit property to be putting out solid new entries more than 30 years later, let alone hitting new heights of artistic creativity and entertainment value. Yet that’s exactly what’s happened with the Predator franchise, which arrived with a bang in 1987 and struggled to provide a genuinely good sequel until 2002, when Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey released on Hulu and reinvigorated the property with arguably its best entry yet. After co-helming the wildly entertaining animated film Predator: Killer of Killers on Hulu this summer, Trachtenberg has at last returned the titular species (technically known as the Yautja) to the big screen with Predator: Badlands.

In Predator: Badlands, Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, Red, White and Brass, The Panthers), a young and undersized Yautja from a proud warrior clan, burns to prove himself worthy of the hunt and earn the respect of his ruthless father, Njhorr (professional wrestler Rueben de Jong). Determined to face a trial no warrior has survived, he plans a forbidden journey to the deadly planet Genna, a world where even the air feels hostile and the apex predator, the Kalisk, is said to be unkillable. But before Dek can depart, Njhorr intervenes — revealing he’s ordered Dek’s own brother, Kwei (Michael Homik, The Hobbit), to kill him for being too weak. Kwei’s defiance costs him his life, and with his final act, he sends Dek to Genna in his place. Crashing into a nightmare world of lethal flora and carnivorous beasts, Dek’s survival depends on an uneasy alliance with Thia (Elle Fanning, The Great, A Complete Unknown), a synthetic humanoid made by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation (introduced in the Alien franchise), who has been damaged and left legless after battling the Kalisk. Guided by her fractured memories and accompanied by a strange, sentient native creature that Thia dubs Bud, Dek embarks on a desperate quest through Genna’s hellscape — where every step brings him closer to the creature that could either define his legacy or end his bloodline.

Predator: Badlands is the kind of mainstream sci-fi action adventure spectacle that doesn’t come along too often, in the sense that it’s fun, inventive and visually splendid, and it actually provides us with great characters that we actually care about seeing survive. Trachenteberg’s love for the original Predator is apparent, but his gleeful new approach to fleshing it out into something newer, bolder and far more emotionally satisfying is so daring and fun that his entries in the series rank among the best sequels in mainstream popcorn movie history. The most significant and welcome part of Trachtenberg’s version has been introducing a moral compass into a series that has always been based on brutality, survival and coming out on top. Since Prey, the writer-director has been infusing the new films with a theme that true strength lies not in being the best killer, but in being a protector, and that a hero is someone who looks out for others. While Predator: Badlands is packed with nearly non-stop action and enough bloody fights to please the fanbase, it also challenges the notion of what true strength and weakness really are, and even serves as something of an indictment of the toxic masculinity of a patriarchal society that defines manhood by toughness.

While there’s no denying that the effects play a huge role, Schuster-Koloamatangi has a screen presence that’s visceral and sympathetic,  primal and yet deeply human, and he shines in the role of Dek. Fanning is outstanding in the dual roles of Thia and her counterpart synthetic, Tessa, whom she views as a sort of sister. The Weyland-Yutani androids have a history of stealing the Alien films, most recently with David Jonsson’s brilliant performance in Alien: Romulus, and Fanning is a more than worthy new addition to a long line of memorable characters. Most of the cast here is either covered in prosthetics or created by CGI, but they all manage to shine, and Rohinal Nayaran (The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug) is simply magical in the motion capture role of the mysterious and lovable Bud.

Predator: Badlands is easily one of the most thoroughly enjoyable entertainment films of the year, and it’s the kind of movie that gives me hope that franchise filmmaking can be made with heart, soul and great craftsmanship rather than just rolling out on a conveyor belt. This is a movie I’m going to be seeing again and again, and I can’t wait to see where Trachtenberg takes us next. —Patrick Gibbs 

Read more film reviews by Patrick Gibbs:
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