Predator: Badlands (now streaming on Hulu, in addition to VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video) finds filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg continuing his quest to revitalize a creatively moribund franchise. It began with 2022’s widely loved Prey and continued with 2025’s similarly celebrated animated anthology Predator: Killer of Killers, both of which debuted on Hulu; Badlands kicks things up a notch with a $105 million budget, a robust theatrical release ($184 million in worldwide ticket sales) and a fresh narrative perspective. That is, establishing one of the Yautja – in case you aren’t familiar with nerd nomenclature, that’s the species name for the Predator creature – as the protagonist, who pairs up with the upper half of a humanoid android who’s clearly seen better days, played by Elle Fanning. The result is a thoroughly entertaining sci-fi odd-couple action-comedy that keenly balances the fresh and the familiar.
The Gist: The opening title card establishes the Yautja as a rather grim and humorless species that is “PREY TO NONE, FRIEND TO NONE, PREDATOR TO ALL.” I bet they’re super-fun at parties! We meet Kwei (Mike Homik) and his brother Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Kolomatangi) as they try to impale each other on pointy weapons like spears and plasma swords, which appears to be the Yautja equivalent of human siblings playing a particularly intense game of Uno. Their warrior society sure seems to be all about passing on generational trauma, where the youngest members of the family, or clan, must hunt down nasty creatures and bring back trophy skulls to prove themselves worthy to their elders, and earn the gizmo that gives them the invisibility cloak we saw Yauja employ in previous Predator movies. Notably, Dek here is the runt of his clan, and his father Njohrr (Reuben de Jong) wants to just kill him so the gene pool isn’t sullied. Kwei defends his brother and gets decapitated by his old man for it – so it goes. Meanwhile, Dek escapes to hunt down a beast known as a kalisk to prove his honor. “To forgive weakness is to show weakness!” bellows Njohrr, who I presume then goes on the internet to post dank memes about “beta cucks” while being secretly gay.
Meanwhile, Dek escapes with his brother’s ship and crash-lands on Genna, a planet populated exclusively by things that wanna kill you. His goal is to hunt down the kalisk, which is the thing on Genna that can kill all the other things that can kill everything except the kalisk. It ain’t gonna be a cakewalk, but Dek is committed to proving himself; even after all that family drama, he still wants to be a part of that toxic hornswaggle, which tells us that Yautja culture doesn’t have much room for psychotherapy. Dek gears up with a spear and a bow and a plasma sword and grenades and a spinny razor thing that flies out of his gauntlet, and gets to trying his damnedest not to be killed by nasty vine creatures, exploding caterpillars, spitting eel-snakes and bulbous plant fruits that fire poisonous thorns in all directions. EVERYTHING on Genna is sharp and/or carnivorous, yet it’s still less hazardous than your typical Chuck E. Cheese location.
As Dek treks the treacherous landscape, he comes across Thia (Fanning), who’s pretty upbeat for someone whose lower half has gone AWOL. She’s a synthetic human, property of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation – yes, the same omnipresent amoral corp from the Alien movies – who currently exists only from the belly button up (question: do synthetics even have navels?) due to an encounter with the kalisk. She works for the company’s bio-weapons divisions, and therefore knows all about the creatures on Genna, so she offers to help Dek on his quest as long as he’s willing to lug her back to her twin android sister, Tessa (also Fanning, of course). Thia is a perky chatterbox and Dek is a grunting homunculus, so it takes a minute for them to acclimate to each other’s personality. They also pick up a stray frog-ape creature Thia names Bud, so now they have a Disney cute-animal sidekick. So as this misfit trio slogs on, fighting monsters and such, Thia helps Dek cultivate a sense of humor and get in touch with his feelings, which for a guy who bellows shit like SENSITIVITY IS WEAKNESS, is easier said than done. Get this – a robot teaching a monster how to be human. The irony here is as rich as Warren Buffett.
Photo: ©Walt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Trachtenberg draws from Aliens as much as from older and recent Godzilla films – and ends up with the best Predator movie since Arnold bellowed GET TO THE CHOPPA!
Performance Worth Watching: Fanning is delightful as the perky encyclopedia-brained, emotionally mature AI. Her comic timing is exquisite, and she engages our hearts in a way most films of this ilk don’t.
Sex And Skin: None.
Photo: Disney
Our Take: Remember, kids – it’s not about whether you murder a monster and bask in the glory of victory and supremacy, it’s about the friends you made along the way. An obvious lesson for us perhaps, but for a Yautja, much harder, because they’re so single-mindedly narcissistic and hemmed into the ideal of the individual over the collective. And rather than cling to the hoary old teamwork-makes-the-dream-work tropes of so many other films, Trachtenberg and screenwriter Patrick Aison lean into found-family themes, yes, like so many other films, but with more thought and intention in terms of plot construction and character development. Dek and Thia function as yin and yang, both wrestling with sibling conflicts and notions of identity, while trapped within transactional societies that reward destruction over gentler things like kindness, compassion and mercy.
This isn’t to say Predator: Badlands is necessarily profound, thematically speaking. But it’s more well-considered than most movies aiming to fill our eyeballs with large-scale monster fights on alien worlds. These core forms of entertainment stem more from character – the friction and eventual connection between Dek and Thia, which also inspire a strong undercurrent of comedy – than the mere pursuit of spectacle. Although spectacle is another thing Trachtenberg executes quite well, leaning heavily on CGI for an array of effective large-scale action set pieces, and to build out the environment, which merges almost seamlessly with the prosthetics-clad cast and Lord of the Rings-ish landscapes (it’s not too far removed from Avatar for immersiveness and sheer commitment to maintaining visual continuity).
It’s refreshing to see a sci-fi action epic prioritizing relationships between characters and delivering lots of fun little twists, reveals, sight gags and callbacks, and embedding the lore and mythology of the Predator franchise within all of it. Badlands also looks terrific, so it has one up on far too many recent Marvel films, and doesn’t rely so heavily on nostalgia like Alien: Romulus. Par for Trachtenberg’s take on the series, it’s mostly a standalone adventure, despite concluding with a functional tease for a sequel. But that tease also functions as one hell of a funny, eyebrow-raising punchline. Whichever way Trachtenberg chooses to take Predator, fans will be with him.
Our Call: Oh, and stop your whining that Predator has gone PG-13 and lost its edge. Badlands delivers the goods enough that you won’t miss the blood and guts. STREAM IT.
How To Watch Predator: Badlands
If you’re new to Hulu, you can get started with a 30-day free trial on the streamer’s basic (with ads) plan. After the trial period, you’ll pay $10.99/month. If you want to upgrade to Hulu ad-free, it costs $18.99/month.
If you want to stream even more and save a few bucks a month while you’re at it, we recommend subscribing to one of the Disney+ Bundles, all of which include Hulu. These bundles start at $12.99/month for ad-supported Disney+ and Hulu and goes up to $32.99/month for Disney+, Hulu, and Max, all ad-free.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
