Predator Badlands turns the hunter into the hero, it’s a risky new path for a classic sci fi monster and it mostly works
Predator fans have learned to manage expectations. For every gritty jungle hunt that lives rent free in our heads, there has been a sequel that tried to top the last. Predator: Badlands arrives with that baggage and a surprising statement. Dan Trachtenberg aims to stretch the franchise into a fable of survival and belonging. The result is an oddly tender adventure that will divide the faithful while winning over anyone who wants their sci fi action with a little heart.
The set up is simple on the surface. Dek is a young and undersized Yautja who needs a trophy to earn his place among the hunters. His quest sends him to Genna, a hostile world that acts like a meat grinder. Everything on Genna crawls, slithers, sprouts, or detonates with malicious glee. Vines coil like constrictors. Sand spits shrapnel. Even the grass seems to have an appetite. Into that nightmare we come across a damaged Weyland Yutani synth named Thia who has lost her legs, her squad, and any patience for macho posturing. The two make a prickly alliance that becomes the film’s most reliable pleasure.
If you prickled at the idea of a Predator film with jokes and warmth, chillout. Trachtenberg is not declawing the icon. He is trying something lateral. Badlands flips point of view to the hunter and asks what tradition means when you are the runt in a culture that worships strength. Dek is not a quip machine. He is cautious, proud, and a little scared, a bundle of instincts covered in mandibles and ritual scar tissue. Dimitrius Schuster Koloamatangi finds a physical rhythm that sells Dek’s growth without much dialogue. You can see the character learning where to place his weight in the suit, how to feint, when to retreat, and when to stand his ground. He is not the unstoppable boogeyman of earlier films. He is a kid in the body of a legend trying to live up to a myth.
Elle Fanning matches him beat for beat. As Thia she supplies the bounce and brain of the duo. Thia is curious, stubborn, and funny in a way that never punctures the danger. Fanning also plays Tessa, a mirror image who treats living things like lab notes. The twin performance lets the film argue with itself about progress, compassion, and corporate ambition. It is a good push and pull.
The planet is the true third lead. Production design and creature work build a biosphere that feels coherent. Genna is not a random menagerie of jump scares. It is a system. Animals and plants exploit terrain and each other with nasty elegance. A recurring armadillo monkey hybrid, instantly nicknamed Bud by Thia, becomes a guide to the rules of the place. Bud is also the lightning rod for the film’s cutest impulses, and your mileage may vary on that. For me, Bud works because the script ties the creature to the larger ecological puzzle.
Action staging is clean and imaginative. Trachtenberg understands that scale alone will not sell a fight. He leans on geography, cause and effect, and the way a body moves through danger. There is one centerpiece sequence that begins with a stealth stalk, fractures into a chase across jagged basalt, and ends with two combatants using the environment against each other in ways that feel both clever and inevitable. You can follow every beat without the camera vibrating itself to death. The PG 13 rating limits the red stuff to neon Yautja blood, milky synth fluid, and monster goo, yet the impact still lands because the choreography has weight.
The Kalisk, the apex prize Dek seeks, looks and moves like a nightmare assembled by an engineer with a mean streak. It is not just big. It is tactical. It watches. It adapts. When it shrugs off an early blow and learns from the attempt, the film signals that Dek will need more than stubborn pride to survive. That small storytelling choice raises the stakes better than any volume boost could. The Kalisk is also tied to Bud in a way that steers the story toward empathy, which will annoy some purists and delight anyone tired of faceless fodder.
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Badlands is not shy about its themes. Found family. The cost of legacy. How a culture decides who counts as strong. In lesser hands these ideas might float like slogans above the plot. Trachtenberg grounds them in behavior. Dek pauses before finishing a kill and listens. Thia refuses to let a mission objective erase a person in her care. Even the villains act with a kind of internal logic that makes them more than sneering roadblocks. Weyland Yutani is still the same smiling shark it has always been, but the film takes time to show how a machine intelligence and a corporate hierarchy might reach the same cruel conclusion for different reasons.
Trachtenberg continues to be the best thing to happen to this brand in years. Prey reminded everyone that a stripped down premise can carry mythic power. Killer of Killers proved there are many corners of this universe worth visiting. Badlands takes a riskier swing and mostly connects. It asks you to care for the hunter without neutering the idea of the hunt. It opens a lane for future stories that do not repeat the same two templates. It is franchise stewardship with curiosity rather than complacency.
So where does Predator: Badlands land on the long timeline of the series. It sits in a new pocket where there are less horror and survival. Less macho cruelty than mentorship and grit. Badlands may not satisfy every appetite, yet it proves there is life in this hunter’s bloodline. If the series keeps trusting filmmakers to chase character and world building as hard as spectacle, the next hunt could be even richer. For now, this one is a worthy trophy.
Screen Rated 