Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'The Predator' (2018)

This movie was so fucking Disney, I'm surprised The Predator didn't break out into song and dance routine. This was so fucking Disney, I'm pretty sure it's a rated R extension of the MCU. Seriously, this movie had the tone of a campy superhero movie, just with lots of blood. It had wacky characters, slapstick humor, good bad guys, a plucky kid genius. I mean, does this sound like a fucking Predator movie?

Here's the thing, it was kinda fun. It's basically a horror comedy. I'm actually thinking about adding it to my Horror Comedy List. I mean, if you liked Critters (1988) you'll like this movie. It's just so damn silly. Clearly, when they decided to do this extension of the franchise, they weren't taking it seriously. I have a feeling that the director, who was also a writer wanted to take the franchise in a completely different direction. It definitely wasn't the right direction, but what the hell, I guess it was worth a shot. I didn't hate it. It was fun. I can recommend it, I guess. Just know what you're getting into really isn't a Predator movie.

So, of course the acting was silly as fuck. It was good enough for horror, but it was intentionally good enough for horror. The acting just matched the tone of the movie. Does that mean it's actually really good acting? They were giving back what they were getting from the tone of the movie... I guess that means the acting was really on point. Weird how that works.

The plot is over complicated and dumb, it's actually kinda brilliant how dumb it is. If it's intentionally dumb, I mean. And I'm pretty sure this movie was intentionally dumb, so again, kinda brilliant. I can't really talk about the plot without the spoilers, so let's just jump right in...

SPOILERS!!!

So, the movie opens with a Predator ship shooting down another Predator ship, which crash lands on Earth, because of course it does. This leads to a fight with a special forces team who somehow end up with some of the Predator's gear. Then the government recovers the Predator and his ship because that always worked so well in previous movies. The only survivor of the special forces team mails the predator equipment to his ex-wife. His kid gets ahold of it and figures out how to use it, because of course he does. The government captures the special forces guy and locks him up with a rag-tag group of crazy special forces soldiers, because I guess this is the A-Team now apparently. The genius kid sets off a signal to the Predator hunting the captured Predator who sends out Predator dogs, because why the fuck not. So then the dogs attack the kid with the predator gear, but the rag-tag group saves him and befriends one of the predator dogs because apparently this is now a fucking kid's movie with extreme violence. So, this leads to a confrontation with the current Predator when we discover it's after something very specific that the kid has. Then, because why the fuck not, the 'Super' Predator attacks. It's eleven feet tall and twice as deadly as the original Predator. Apparently, writer/director Shane Black is secretly a 12 year old boy with ADHD. I am frankly shocked, and a little disappointed, that someone didn't try to fight the Super Predator with a chainsaw. Finally, the Super Predator tries to kidnap the super genius kid because he wants to steal his DNA and bring it back to its home world to splice into more Super Predators.

Read all that shit again. I want you to really process how fucking ridiculous this movie is. This is why it's a horror comedy. It's just a bunch of slapstick nonsense with Predators. There's even several scenes with throwback lines from the original movie. I do believe they must have been having fun making this movie. I mean, fucking Keegan Michael Key is in this fucking movie cracking-wise.

But yeah, this movie was fun and you should try it at least once.