Disclaimer:  The views expressed here are mine alone and do not represent those of allgames.com. 

Note: The Predator movie is Rated R and should not be seen by anyone under age 17 unless accompanied by parents or adult guardians. 

Introduction to The Predator Movie Review by Ms. H

If you want to see a movie with lots of explosions, fights, monsters etc., then you may want to check out The Predator movie.  Additionally, if you would like to enjoy a few laughs, then you can watch for these moments in The Predator movie. However, if you would like to watch a well-thought out action movie involving aliens along with suspense that lead up to a great ending -- you may want to pass on The Predator movie or at least wait until it goes to DVD or streaming services.

Storyline of The Predator Movie

In attempting to extrapolate a concrete storyline with the many interruptions of explosions, change in action scenes, back to quiet times, return to fights-shootouts -- you may become stressed or overwhelmed while trying to follow this movie.  If you see The Predator movie, my advice is to just watch it and know that even though it lasts l hour, 47 minutes, eventually the movie will end -- and you can get your mind settled.

Here’s what I got from The Predator movie’s storyline.  While camouflaged snipers are trying to rescue hostages, a special “soldier” finds alien pieces that he discovers have special powers. He also gets a slight view of the alien in the dense, forest environment.  After a few gruesome scenes, before he leaves the battleground, he swallows a silver round metal object that gives him special powers to disappear and reappear in alien form.

To make a long story short, the sniper is later captured, put on a bus with criminals that have challenges -- who escape from the prison bus and embark on a mission to battle the Predator.  In the meantime there is a rival team searching for the Predator. First they fight against each other as enemies, then as a united team against the Predator. There are also grotestque looking dog-like alien creatures running around.

Olivia Munn's character, Dr. Casey Bracket tries to inspect an alien specie being held captive in a science lab. Of course he breaks free, becomes violent towards just about everyone in the ensuing scenes -- except for Olivia Munn’s character who is practically ignored.  In the middle of all this mayhem is a young boy, Rory Mckenna played by Jacob Tremblay who finds a mask that has special powers. He uses the mask to go trick or treating, gets bullied, uses the mask's power to cause an explosion and later is present during the fight between the teams and the Predator.

At the start of the movie, you may think that The Predator movie has an all-male cast; however, eventually Olivia Munn's character appears as a scientist who by the way tries to fight against an alien monster who seemed to, as I mentioned earlier,  simply dismiss her.  Olivia Munn’s character has some close calls during the movie -- but since she is one of the main stars of the movie, I knew she would survive throughout.

Pros of The Predator Movie

I think there were some humorous scenes in the movie that happened mostly when the team from the bus were together.  I expected comedy in the movie when I found out that Keegan-Michael Key, who normally appears in comedy roles, was part of the cast.  Some of his jokes fell short and were not funny, but there was at least one comedic part involving Olivia Munn’s character that was humorous.

Even though the Predator, as well as the Alien were all probably computer-generated images (CGI) in some scenes, in my opinion, the artists did an adequate job of making them both look their parts -- even though I did not like seeing the aliens wearing dread hairstyles.

Cons of The Predator Movie

Most of the movie moved from action to drama then back to action in a manner that seemed disjointed to me. In one scene there may be a huge fight, then in the next there could be a quiet time -- with no smooth transitioning between the different type scenes.

Also, I was not a fan of having an underage actor say profane words. I do not know why -- but apparently, this was funny to the movie-viewing audience, since I heard laughter in the theater when he said them. However, I disagree with this being done in movies involving young children. Instead of laughter from the audience, there should have been complete silence to let the writer-director know this was not ok. Instead of using profanity, they could have told the minor young actor to say other words, more suitable for his age. Or the words could have been changed in the script.  I did not like hearing profane words throughout this movie, and to the writer's discredit, did not expect to hear them coming from a child.

By the way, the actor who played the mother of the young boy appeared in the movie for a few minutes before the movie seemed to completely forget about her.  Her young son is away for a very long time supposedly trick or treating at night on Halloween and she does not reappear in the movie to make sure he is alright. This seems very unlikely to me, since I’m sure she would have called, or found some other way to try to reach him.

Recommendations for The Predator Movie

Decrease the number of times gross, graphic, bloody characters, aliens etc.  are shown on the screen.  I saw no reason to keep showing these scenes numerous times which did not move the story along.

Cast Trevante Rhodes as the leader of the group, since he acted  like more of a leader before Boyd Holbrook as Quinn McKenna showed up and took on the role.  Even though Trevante Rhodes played the character of Nebraska Williams, a smoker and performed a silly act during the movie, I was impressed by his acting skills and know he probably would have done a good job as the leader of this group.

As I alluded to before, use better transitions between the various type scenes.  The movie to me appeared to be heavily edited, with numerous scenes moved around haphazardly.

Assessment of The Predator Movie

All in all, The Predator Movie was unfortunately a disappointment to me.  For a movie franchise that has a reputation of providing quality movie content over previous years, I think this movie failed in many areas as discussed above. On a positive note, the quiet times of the movie were entertaining including when the group joked together -- but other times with the many loud explosions, repetitive fights, involvement of a child speaking profanity and other reasons as stated above --  I was not entertained by The Predator movie.

Rating of The Predator Movie

Based on a rating of 1 star to 5 stars with 5 stars being the highest, I rate The Predator movie  2 stars.