Most damningly: why? Yet something’s really not right here. Plot points are left dangling. Characters are thinned out. Things don’t really make much sense. The effects at the end look unfinished to the point of making me recall The Mummy Returns. Most damningly of all, there’s no sign of who the author is. It certainly doesn’t feel like a Shane Black project, that much is certain. The last thing I’d expect of one of his films is something so bland, so lacking in identity, and so much a mish-mash of stuff that, bluntly, doesn’t mish-mash together very well. Working from a script that he co-wrote with Fred Dekker, there are moments in The Predator where you get an inkling of the ideas that may have drawn the pair to the project. Some deeper exploration of the Predator motives, and some attempt to do something more with the species. But in the midst of it, the primal idea of an alien force coming to Earth and, well, hunting us, has been lost. Frustratingly, it’s there at the start. We meet Boyd Holbrook’s Quinn McKenna, a man with a fractured marriage, a son with Asperger’s (coming to that), and a wife who sort of defends him a bit. But at the beginning, Quinn is a sniper, in the jungle, and has an alien encounter. There’s a nod to the spirit of the original here, and the feeling that we’re in safe hands. For one of the sweary men, Thomas Jane’s Baxley, suffers from Tourette’s. His character is also dealing with PTSD, but the main reason for this seems to be so that Baxley can spit out obscenities, where we’re expected to laugh at them. I for one associate Shane Black movies with crackling dialogue, with real snap and genuine wit. The conversation where sweary men are trying to work out if Baxley said something to do with a woman’s nether regions is please-let-the-floor-open-up bad. If they reshot and recut other stuff, how the heck did that get through? Surprisingly, virtually none of the humour lands. It’s as if Dekker and Black’s copy of Final Draft has been hacked by some ‘bantz’ malware, replacing characters talking to each other with one tired exchange after another. Men ribbing men with clumsy lines spat at each other. Olivia Munn is in the midst of the story too, and as always, puts in a very good work. But she’s on a loser here. Sterling K Brown is the standout in the cast. It’s not just the dialogue that’s problematic. Early in the film, a Predator is restrained in a lab overseen by Jake Busey in a white coat. He Jakesplains a few things, which is all fun, because it’s Jake Busey, right? We’re also told by the people in said lab that the Predator has been sedated, and there’s no way he’ll get out. And I’m sat there thinking that Black and Dekker will surely subvert this, and have some fun with such an obvious set up. Slight spoiler: they don’t. Instead, we get a Predator sequence in bright light. Like pretty much every Predator sequence in the film, it barely musters a fraction of the tension you’d get from checking your kettle was plugged in properly in the morning. How can so many brilliant people kick the ball so far wide of the goal? It’s sealed by a handling of Asperger’s, through the character of Jacob Tremblay, and Tourette’s in a way that I found uncomfortable at best, pretty offensive at worst. If that doesn’t get you, though, panic not: piss-poor jokes about race, vaginas, blowjobs and your mother are queuing up to have a go. You need something brilliant to make those work without isolating large chunks of your audience. This film does not make those moments work. It’s not offence for skill, or story purposes. It feels like offence because, well, there’s nothing else in the tank. Furthermore, I am very conscious of the fact that it’s easy to review a film as you wanted it to be. I, like many of you, loved the idea of Shane Black directing a Predator movie, bringing the energy, verve, fun and edge that’s embedded deep in his film work to date. That this film took a different turn though, fair enough. But that it’s nasty (and not in a good way), that it pisses away the Predators as a threat (we get one just firing a standard gun at one point. A Predator, a lethal hunter, just left firing a gun), that it fails to explain plot points, and just resorts to blowjob and vagina jokes when it’s in trouble? Well, it’s the franchise disappointment of the year. It’s such a crushing letdown. When one character lamely tosses out “get to the chopper” at one point, it just doubles the pain. A bad misfire this, particularly disappointing given the pedigree of who’s behind the camera. I think I may have got that across. Save your money. Buy a Predator boxset, The Nice Guys, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Lethal Weapon. Every single one of those is worth your time to some degree. The Predator, though, is not.
