The Predator Series Softens Its Claws As It Enters the Fun Badlands

“If it bleeds, we can kill it.” It’s a famous line from the 1987 movie Predator, repeated in winking variations in several sequels over the years. Predator: Badlands, the latest of those sequels, turns the construction around, not in dialogue (where the line is reprised regarding a different, less humanoid creature), but in implication: If Predators, tall and muscular alien creatures that travel around the galaxy sport-hunting various other species, can bleed, as well as walk and talk and master interplanetary travel and kit themselves out in killing gear, could they maybe also feel emotional pain? Could they grieve, perhaps, or defensively shut others out as a way of dealing with their familial estrangement?

This may not sound like the most promising crack at the Predator series, which has heretofore specialized in observing heroes from badass to plucky dealing with the unexpected Predator threat. But director Dan Trachtenberg has experience taking the series in a different-yet-familiar direction. He’s the only major filmmaker to actually return to the series (unless you count Shane Black showing up as an actor in the original, then writing and directing another 2018 sequel), and though Badlands has a subtitle that sounds like it could be a period-piece companion to his previous Prey, set in early eighteenth century America, this one jumps ahead hundreds of years, avoiding Earth – and humans! – entirely.

Instead, a Predator serves as our point-of-view character: a supposed “runt” of his clan called Dek (New Zealand actor Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, in an elaborate suit) is sentenced to death by his imperious father and briefly protected by his more understanding brother. Dek’s brother thinks he should at least be afforded the opportunity to go on his mettle-proving hunt, return with a trophy and earn his invisibility cloak. (The Predators really do lean heavily on those things; you’d think performing without one would be a greater point of pride.) Dek, in a fit of overzealous ambition, chooses a particularly difficult creature called the Kalisk, on a particularly deadly planet. (Many have tried to conquer this one before him, and failed; the Kalisk is said to be literally unkillable. Maybe some of the past challengers mistook it for a similarly-named piece of IKEA furniture.) Just before Dek departs, his family is torn apart by their virulent differences of opinion, something Predators handle about as well as you might expect. He lands on the planet especially convinced that he must demonstrate his worth to what remains of his immediate clan.

Through this point, Predator: Badlands has engaged almost exclusively with the kind of scatterbrained fan speculation about Predator-planet lore that has followed viewings of these movies for generations. (I should know, as a Predator-loving scatterbrain.) Thalia (Elle Fanning), meanwhile, has another batch of these fannish questions locked and loaded, firing them at will when she meets Dek. She’s a stranded “synthetic” (the terminology of the Alien films, from which this Weyland-Yutani model has been imported by entertainment’s own Weyland-Yutani, the Walt Disney Company), rendered legless by the very creature Dek seeks. She knows about the Yautja, as they call themselves, and her chatterbox curiosity doesn’t let up as she nags Dek into a deal: Help her reunite with her wayward legs, so that she might also find her fellow wayward synthetic Tessa, and she’ll guide him to his possible trophy, which she has observed in the wild.

This is how Predator: Badlands carefully sidesteps the past entries’ tendency to show humans getting absolutely eviscerated by the fearsome Predators. This is a movie entirely of Yautja, synthetics, and various creatures, and anyone aching from the absence of a big-budget, flora-and-fauna-filled Star Wars movie (or even eager to fill the about-to-close Avatar gap) will delight in the sheer variety of (PG-13, notably) deadliness that await our mismatched buddies. The nature of their mismatch, sadly, is pretty boilerplate stuff about found family, self-worth, and empathy. Do we really need to hear about all this in a Predator movie? Especially extra-pronounced by Thalia, whose chipper synthetic bluntness makes her all too adept at blurting out the movie’s themes?

We do not. However: We also do not particularly need to see new ways for a Predator to destroy a pile of unsuspecting humans, so fair enough that Badlands tries something new, more sci-fi adventure than pulpy slasher, even if this decision may be driven by the needs of the box office and the aforementioned parent company. More than fair, actually; the Predator movies have not exactly been philosophy texts, and Trachtenberg’s obvious love for this world shines through in every weirdo creature design, paperback-cover art direction, and sci-fi homage. Dek even carries Thalia around with a makeshift backpack, like Chewbacca toting C3PO in Empire Strikes Back, only with way less whining. Trachtenberg and the screenwriters have particular fun coding Dek and Thalia as childlike: Dek’s little tunic and less pronounced Dreadator hair makes him look like he’s wearing short pants with a dorky alt-right haircut, while Thalia has been programmed for extra sensitivity at the wondrous sights she gets to see around this foreign planet, even if her view comes primarily from being hurled around by various creatures.

Predator: Badlands is also a marvel of pacing, quick but not frenetic; like most previous entries, it runs a trim 107 minutes (is this a mystical number in the Predator mythology?). The lack of Predator invisibility for much of the film is a welcome variation, as is the movie’s inventive appropriation of hostile-not-evil biological marvels surrounding its characters, a logical extension of the frequent forest-and-jungle settings seen in previous films. Though the Weyland-Yutani shout-out is bound to set some fandom shareholders’ hearts aflutter, the filmmakers don’t lard the movie with sequel teases. (Its not-even-mid-credits bonus scene is half gag, half creative writing prompt.) The movie works in its moment. It seems to know that an obvious, crowd-pleasing helping of franchise nonsense at least needs to have some kind of meat, however synthetic it may secretly be.

Director: Dan Trachtenberg
Writers: Patrick Aison, Brian Duffield
Stars: Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, Elle Fanning
Release Date: Nov. 7, 2025

Jesse Hassenger is associate movies editor at Paste. He also writes about movies and other pop-culture stuff for a bunch of outlets including A.V. Club, GQ, Decider, the Daily Beast, and SportsAlcohol.com, where offerings include an informal podcast. He also co-hosts the New Flesh, a podcast about horror movies, and wastes time on social media under the handle @rockmarooned.

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