"Prey" REVIEW

The wind cools.

Leaves turn orange.

Jack-o-lanterns appear on doorsteps, along with styrofoam tombstones.

It's horror season, and we're all looking for new movies to pair with familiar favorites. And at this moment, Netflix offers us Prey.

Prey is a German movie with a killer premise: five guys go off into the woods for a bachelor party, but a sniper has other plans for them. The woods are dense, and they can rarely see the shooter who is taking shots at them. At any moment, a bullet could end any of their lives, giving the movie a real sense of tension.

The premise is good, and a lot of the cinematography is surprisingly solid, with forest scenes reminiscent of 2017's The Ritual. And yet, the movie manages to be a complete waste of time. How does such a promising set-up go so wrong?

In this case, the length is a real problem. If this had been a short film, maybe the premise of five men being hunted in the woods could have maintained tension for the film's duration. Instead, at almost ninety minutes, the movie struggles to find a reason to exist for long periods of time. At multiple points the villain could end the movie but chooses not to. What explanation is offered?

Halfway through the movie, our protagonist states it outright: "Who says it has to make sense?"

It takes 13 minutes for the action to start, and when the action does start it just limps from scene to scene with very little changing in a dynamic manner. This is a movie that wants to waste your time. How will it do so?

Well, it will waste your time with the killer's backstory (that doesn't have any impact on the narrative's outcome, and could just as easily be cut as included). It wastes your time with the protagonist's infighting. Supposedly they're on a bachelor party together, but you'll have no reason to believe they're actually friends. It will waste your time with the history of the romantic relationship that's culminating in this bachelor party, but that could also be cut from the movie without changing the actual central plot.

That lack-of-impact also manifests in the movie's struggle to establish the protagonist in any meaningful way. Once the sniper starts taking shots at our protagonists, the heroes don't really have any meaningful decisions to make for the remainder of the film. Lacking decisions, their characterisation becomes flat and merely factual. We're told that they have various qualities, but we don't really have the opportunity to see any of those qualities impact the story, so it just feels like a shopping-list of characteristics rather than three-dimensional people.

We are told about the protagonist's relationship with his fiance, but do we feel any of that connection? None of his actions within the narrative actually show the sign of their relationship. The movie starts to add levels of ambiguity to their relationship, but she exists outside of the world of the plot. Once the sniper starts shooting, does the problems between the protagonist and his fiance really matter?

In a sense, the movie's killer premise ends up strangling any potential the movie had, because the end result is just a series of scenes where the characters move from one part of the forest to another, occasionally being shot at. They do nothing to earn our sympathies, and they do nothing to maintain our interest.

At several points the characters must choose to stick together or separate, but beyond that there are precious-few choices for them to make. After all, they are still just running from the same sniper. They still don't have weapons to fight back. They still fail to think of any interesting ways to try to defeat the sniper, and wouldn't you know it? They still don't have cell coverage.

How much time is passing?

How much blood are the wounded losing?

How much are their relationships changing?

The movie is shockingly unclear about all of these, so the end result is a movie that feels like an opera consisting only of one or two notes.

Frankly, Prey will do nothing to earn or reward your attention.

If you're looking for a horror movie about men bickering in the woods while something tries to kill them, The Ritual is the Netflix movie you should be going for. Prey should be skipped unless you really just are looking for some pretty images of the German countryside.

"Prey" and "The Ritual" are available via Netflix.