Trachtenberg | 2025 | USA

I was skeptical that this would be interesting to me. Inverting the narrative perspective of a Predator film from the prey to the predator seemed like it would rather defeat the purpose. To go one step further and give a ‘predator’ a hero’s journey seemed patently silly. But one of the hills I will always be happy to die on is that the phenomenological refrain that we must return to “the things themselves” is as true in film as in life. This is just a movie doing its own thing, and I’m just watching. Happily, this is one of the times I was rewarded for taking a film on its own terms.

Elle Fanning is really rather wonderful in the dual roles of Thia and Tessa. I do tend to enjoy when a villain isn’t evil for evil’s sake. Having one “sister” parading through the film with demonstrative power is a nifty narrative trick that allows you to buy everything that happens in the third act; that disembodied legs can be hilarious AND a killing machine.

Frankly, I regret not seeing this in cinemas. Some of the visuals are incredible. Craft is foregrounded, and it pays off. Competency gets you pretty far these days.