Jonah Naplan   November 7, 2025

“Predator” movies have never exactly been known for their subtlety or nuance; that is until Dan Trachtenberg entered the scene. After directing the excellent “10 Cloverfield Lane,” his “Prey” from 2022 redefined what this franchise could be on both an emotional and visceral level, giving us characters we cared about and wanted to see take down the big alien adversary. That film, along with this past June’s “Predator: Killer of Killers,” were both released straight to Hulu and may have been underseen by general audiences for that reason. Trachtenberg finally returns to the movie theater with “Predator: Badlands,” which changes up the typical narrative of this franchise by having the title creature be the protagonist rather than the enemy. The creature, a “Yautja” named Dek, is sent to a foreign planet on a classic hero’s journey of self-discovery after watching his brother be killed by his father. You’ll probably wonder initially how the movie will have you caring about the adventures of a non-verbal alien for two hours, but Trachtenberg makes it work.

Dek is played by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, and the movie shows off its astonishing motion capture work right away. The opening duel sequence is simply mesmerizing in sound and visuals; even small details like the noise the Yautja swords make as they clash against one another feel inventive. Of course, the slaughter of Dek’s brother in the beginning acts as the inciting incident and drives the rest of the movie’s story, which takes us through a dangerous planet called Genna, revealing loads of plant and animal species, and ultimately teaming Dek up with a legless android chatterbox named Thia (the top half of Elle Fanning). Both of them are searching for a mega-creature called the Kalisk; Dek vows to bring home its head to his father to prove his worth, while Thia seeks vengeance after it ravaged most of the mobile colonies on Genna, including her own. The destruction separated the android from her identical twin sister Tessa (also played by Fanning), who is supposedly still alive and out in the wilderness somewhere. One of the movie’s many wonderful tricks is the effect it creates of having the same actress play two different characters—often appearing in the same shot together—and making them completely believable as individual personalities through expert editing, cinematography by Jeff Cutter, and Fanning’s game-for-anything attitude (between this, “Sinners,” “Mickey 17,” and “The Monkey,” 2025 has sure been the year of twins).

Harnessing Thia like a backpack, Dek and his new friend embark on a planet-spanning adventure, encountering imaginative new sights and species, such as a field of razor-blade grass, an exuberant little munchkin with an outer shell so strong it shatters the teeth of predators, and a massive vine-like creature that snatches its victims up and tosses them around until they quit fighting. The two of them, with Thia’s constant jabbering and Dek’s reluctant catalogue of indecipherable grunts, develop a camaraderie based on mutual understanding and a will to help each other, and “Predator: Badlands” turns into a sort of off-beat buddy movie that grows more and more endearing as it unfolds.

Trachtenberg, working from a screenplay by Patrick Aison, has a phenomenal way of captivating us with bestial characters. There’s not a single human in the movie, yet we still manage to empathize with everybody because they experience real human feelings like loss, regret, and remorse. The lack of homosapiens is also why “Predator: Badlands” can get away with being rated PG-13, despite all the violence. Loads of henchmen resembling humans can be ripped to shreds by other characters so long as they don’t bleed; instead, they spark and sputter like androids would. Likewise, all of the exotic predators meet similar gruesome demises and it’s still passable because they aren’t human. The blood can be blue, yellow, or even radioactive, as long as it’s not red.

The excellent production design and visual effects spice up what would otherwise be a fairly familiar and one-note story. Like the recent “Tron: Ares,” this film reckons with some of the oldest folk tale and biblical clichés known to mankind like brotherhood, salvation, and retribution. Trachtenberg takes the time to develop who Dek is as a character, thereby inspiring our emotional attachment to him and his journey. The other “Predator” movies seemed to have much different goals: certainly the original 1987 “Predator,” starring Arnie and directed by John McTiernan, and its sequel, starring Danny Glover (and Bill Paxton!), were most concerned with being fun and entertaining and didn’t give much mind to creating relatable characters that we cared about, while Shane Black’s 2018 “The Predator” followed closely in its footsteps. “Badlands” goes in a vastly different direction; these are characters who we want to see overcome their challenges and succeed on their own merits. We’re rooting for these outcasts and, indeed, there’s several sweet, light-hearted moments throughout that help to build out our adoration for them.

Also like “Tron: Ares,” this is a film about androids learning about human culture and beginning to feel human emotions through those experiences. Thia’s reckonings with Tessa, in particular, are advanced and ultra-mature for a robot, and Fanning does an excellent job, in both roles, of portraying those sorts of complex themes. She’s also a lovely physical actress; as a literal torso for a lot of the runtime, Fanning has the opportunity to play around with slapstick gags, and one of the most memorable scenes in the movie is her struggle to surgically reattach her legs while Dek clashes with a creature just outside. The best parts of “Predator: Badlands” are like this; fun with an edge, whether that’s dark humor, a little extra heart, or some nifty new extraterrestrial gadget or weapon.

Aison’s script largely just falters in the mid-section, where the movie seems to be repeating the same themes over and over again through expositional dialogue. You could make the argument that the wordless subtleties of “Badlands” make it “slow,” but this talky-talky section is the slowest part of all in a not-good way, reverting back to the tell-not-show tendencies that undermined the later “Predator”—and franchise-adjacent “Alien”—movies. Likewise, the big smackdown finale, so common in most science-fiction epics, ultimately lacks the oomph that the rest of “Badlands” has, succumbing to the genre clichés that have long become sour.

And yet, there’s enough about Trachtenberg’s latest outing that works that makes these shortcomings seem less substantial. When Dek finally does return home to face his father, the moment feels undeniably triumphant. We know it’s been coming all along, but the familiar yet carefully calibrated hero’s journey leading up to it earns the payoff. It’s a formula practically as old as the art form itself, but it has survived for so long because it works.

Now playing in theaters.