The 'Predator' film series is a mixed bag, with the best being the 1987 film (a great film on its own) and its follow-up, the only great ones from personal opinion. Was actually really intrigued into seeing 'The Predator', despite hearing numerous bad things about it, and saw it anyway with an open mind. Just to make that clear in answer to the condescending accusations made by those defending the film without taking into account that those who didn't did see the film and simply didn't like it legitimately.
Can totally see why many were disappointed and share a lot of the criticisms directed against it. Didn't think it was that bad and it had its moments and decent assets, a 1-star film 'The Predator' isn't. Although towards the weaker end ranking films from 2018 seen, it is not one of the worst, being better than 'The First Purge' and 'Slender Man'. It's not a good film, hugely disappointing in fact, and has a lot of issues. As a Predator film 'The Predator' is a disgrace, but as a standalone film judged on its own terms it also doesn't work.
Before getting on to the faults, 'The Predator' has good points. It looks good, very slick and atmospheric with some of the effects being great and imposing.
At times, the action is fun and edge of your seat, contributing to the occasional glimpses of tension and excitement lacking elsewhere, with cohesive choreography and spectacular stunts. The film also begins promisingly, zippy in pace and quite thrilling.
When it comes to the predator, it is scary and imposing enough, as are the other creatures and their methods, and the gore does disturb and doesn't feel too gratuitous.
However, Shane Black's direction is constantly wayward and fails to generate much momentum, personality or clarity of storytelling. The character chemistry is not very natural and excepting perhaps Jacob Tremblay the acting doesn't seem very engaged or at ease. The characters are sketchy in development, are very difficult to get behind and their credibility is zero. There is effort to develop them, but through very clumsily written, superficially soap-operatic and blatant exposition that doesn't always feel necessary, adding nothing to the story or characters and failing to intrigue.
On top of that, the story, as well as being slight and at times sluggish, is far too complicated and busy which makes some of the film very hard to follow and at worst incoherent. There is lots of chaos and noise on the surface but no brains or soul underneath, while there is very little tension, suspense or surprises, relying on the action to make the film watchable which it marginally does. The atmosphere generally is bland and doesn't evoke enough scares, not enough to bite the nails anyhow. Nothing memorable about the music and the basic concept doesn't feel that much evolved, having not enough freshness, and it is too forgetful of what made the franchise at its best so great and too cheesy and bland to be a tribute or throwback.
It is the script that comes off the worst and nearly single-handedly brings 'The Predator' down, bad enough to warrant its own paragraph. It is far too talky in the exposition, it rambles often pointlessly and sometimes with not much cohesion, plausibility is as non-existent as the credibility, there is excessive sentimentality in spots and muddled moments and worst of all the over-reliance of humour. Next to none of the humour works which is a massive problem, it is eye-rollingly cheesy and not placed or timed very well too often, also being repetitive and distastefully vulgar.
Overall, not awful but mediocre. 4/10 Bethany Cox
