Predator Badlands (2025) **** – Seen at the Cinema

In possibly the most audacious pivot in sci fi here’s a movie minus any human characters. The leading character Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is a monster straight out of the Alien back catalog and he is accompanied on his journey through the titular badlands by an android Thia (Elle Fanning), though one programmed with feelings though only for scientific purposes, and a mini-monster Bud (Rohinal Naharan) who when he’s not being fierce is quite cute.

The tale, however, has recognizably human dimensions. Dek is the runt of the litter and since weakness is despised in his clan he is scheduled to be terminated by his big brother, who can’t bring himself to do it so it’s left to his ruthless father to kill the protective brother. Meanwhile, Dek escapes to a distant planet, Genna, where everything is lethal including the grass. He hopes to prove his worth by killing the biggest monster in the universe, Kalisk. He teams up with a legless android Thia who has formed an affection of a sibling nature for a fellow synthetic Tessa (Elle Fanning).

The monsters encountered are pretty impressive and the landscape, whose rock formations suggest ragged versions of the spaceship that houses the aliens in the Alien series, is a visual treat. Though originally regarding Thia as nothing more than a “tool”, and happy to abandon whenever her usefulness ends, Dek ends up reacting in quite human fashion to her.

So if you’ve come expecting an extension of the Predator franchise where the monster merely exists to hunt down anyone in its path and you don’t get a glimpse of its character beyond the slicing and dicing this isn’t for you. But if you are open to a refreshing take on the monster universe, there’s plenty to enjoy.

And given the drought of audience-friendly pictures this last couple of months, an action picture with some emotional notes is more than welcome and thank goodness it hasn’t come with critics touting it for Oscar glory.

Turning the previous concept on its head, young Dek is the hunted not the hunter. He doesn’t have to go far to encounter venom, everything that moves or grows is dangerous. He’s got the moves and a scimitar that seems to owe something to a weapon from a different universe – the light saber. Even so, it’s often only by luck that he survives.

His teaming with Thia falls into a more conventional trope, the buddies who start out as enemies and/or the brain vs brawn combo. Thia speaks every language on the planet which helps when he is linguistically confounded. And Bud plays the unwelcome recruit which dates back to The Magnificent Seven (1960) and way before, though he turns out to play a significant part. There’s even time for some humor as when Thia’s disembodied legs stride down the street and go into vexatious action.

Given we’re dealing with non-humans, there’s a surprising emotional upside and a pay-off that provides a neat twist and suggests a sequel.

It would be non-stop action except for the interplay between hero and his “tool” and the emotional elements that spurt up every now and then. On the action alone it would be well worth your bucks, but the other elements take it a level above.

While Elle Fanning’s (A Complete Unknown, 2024) double turn isn’t as in-depth as that of Michael B Jordan in Sinners (2025) it’s still pretty good and had this been another kind of picture her misplaced affection for her scientifically-generated sibling  might have received greater emphasis.

The stripped down and pedal-to-the-metal narrative is driven by director Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane, 2016) who would be one of the few directors to genuinely deserve the “visionary” tag so carelessly thrown around. He had a hand in the screenplay along with Patrick Aison (Prey, 2022) based on the Predator characters invented by Jim and John Thomas.

Hot stuff.