Predator: Badlands (2025) Review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43R9l7EkJwE

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

It’s not easy to prove your worth when expectations are either plain difficult or unfair but when you get to shine, it’s up to you to decide how you want to keep going.


PLOT


Predator: Badlands takes place in a distant future and for the first time, the franchise centers on a Yautja runt of Yautja Prime named Dek who vows in hunting an apex predator, the Kalisk, in the planet Genna. His father Njohrr (Reuben de Jong) deems him too weak for their clan and is ordered to be executed, but is instead defended by his brother Kwei (Mike Homik). As a result of transporting Dek to Genna in defiance, he is killed by his father and his brother helplessly watches. Upon crash landing, Dek sees firsthand that Genna lives up to being a ‘death planet’ due to everything on sight wanting to kill him including the flora/fauna. The one being he reluctantly allies with is Thia, a severed android of Weyland-Yutani who offers to lead him the way since she and her team we're overpowered by the Kalisk when looking for it as well. Along the way, Dek kills multiple beasts and is unintentionally attached to another creature Thia would dub ‘Bud’ who marks them with saliva. As the Yautja shares what happened to his brother, Thia’s synthetic doppelgänger Tessa gets repaired and reports to the company of her setback. She is threatened to be decommissioned if she doesn’t capture the Kalisk. So when she finds out her counterpart is with a Yautja, she starts looking for her as she scavenges Dek’s remaining weapons from his ship. When Dek & Thia reach a campsite where she last encountered the Kalisk, the latter tries reattaching herself to her legs and admits to the former of alerting Tessa where she is, pleading with him to leave as she doesn’t think he can kill the apex predator. Dek refuses to listen and still chooses to face it head on. When it shows up, it proves itself to be unlikable when regenerating but it spares Dek when smelling him; It even interrupts Thia’s attempt to reattach herself to her legs. By the time it does so, Tessa arrives to capture them both. Tessa does see the potential for the company to experiment on a Yautja and even considers de activating Thia for deeming her emotions as a weakness. That doesn’t happen yet when the latter helps the former escape. As the Yautja makes weapons out of Genna’s environment, he reunites with Bud and deduces it is the Kalisk’s child. Realizing this inspires him to save both Thia and the Kalisk mother. As they kill most of the android guards, they help Thia reattach herself again before freeing the Kalisk. The latter is able to swallow Tessa once freed, but the Android does the impossible in killing it with Dek’s cryogenic grenades and plasmacaster. Luckily, Bud helps Dek rip off her head and spine as a signature Yautja trophy. Sometime later, Dek returns to Yautja Prime with Thia & a now larger Bud and brings Tessa’s head as proof of a successful hunt. Njohrr still rejects his son again until he proves again to be an improved hunter when killing his bodyguards and pinning him down with one of his traps. As he pleads for mercy, Dek rejects him this time and takes his cloaking device as a reward before Bud bites his head off. The film ends in a cliffhanger where Dek sees his mother appearing from the horizon.


THOUGHTS


Dan Trachtenberg has been pulling off great feet in giving a consistent run in quality for the Predator franchise, which is quite overdue. Prey and the animated Killer of Killers were great features on Hulu due to breaking the formula and taking place in the past instead of being contemporary. This entry that brings the franchise back to the big screen does more things differently and holds up well too. A PG-13 rated adventure that’s just as violent as R rated predecessors? Check. Name dropping the species’ name onscreen officially after being given such through 90s comic books? Check. Having an Easter egg of the skull of Harvesters from Independence Day as part of a Yautja trophy like the Xenomorphs and a Tyrannosaurus Rex? Hell yes. Centering a combative alien as the protagonist instead of being the antagonist after all these years and mostly excluding humans from center focus, to the point where their foreign language is heard more than English? Quite overdue. As a common blockbuster of the 21st century, you know the makeup/visual effects, and production design are gonna be well made and it goes without saying it doesn’t disappoint. Apart from Bud’s adorability to his mother being an immovable object, simple moments like a severed Elle Fanning in typical Android fashion or noticing Dek have a chipped fang is downright impressive. From one action scene to another, you’re hooked on how intense each one gets and so on. The goal for Trachtenberg is giving fans what we’ve been wanting and it’s all been paying off because each narrative has made sense and it continues here. It is already ideal to admit Yautja aren’t perfect hunters since we’ve seen them outwitted by past human protagonists, but seeing one of their own be so disowned to the point of being desperate in proving oneself is where it gets all the more compelling. For the most part, I can go on and say the costumes are the biggest compliment to look back on when it comes to the Yautja’s presence over the years. With Dek being front and center however, you get to follow how true strength comes from empathy rather than might making right. Actor Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi makes the protagonist a force to be reckoned with when going from stoic to adaptable and understands loyalty better than the rest of his kind. Ironically, it took a non living thing to teach him to expand his horizons. Double the Fanning meant double the fun and said actress was a goddamn delight going from the naive Thia to the calculated Tessa, the latter of which rivals that matter from what we see from Njohrr, since it is shocking yet badass for her to use Yautja weapons to kill the Kalisk. Knowing that it worked for her, it’s best to believe Dek would’ve had the same luck had he had the same weapons on him at the time. It’s honestly ideal for this AVP crossover to happen because it makes sense Weyland-Yutani would continuously repeat the mistake on wanting to weaponize extraterrestrials & bring them to earth as if they don’t learn from each xenomorph encounter. Thia is of course the better half of the sisterly duo because she is able to teach him adaptation is better than tradition and it paid off because he uses the former to his advantage to save her the way she saved him. That same method is what allows him to accept Bud. With the Kalisk mother sparing him thanks to the mark of its son, he would furthermore respect nature as a whole. However more dangerous Dek’s mother is supposed, it’s a good thing he’ll have his new clan to better his chances against her. I respect a lot of things this movie has going for, but there are still a handful of things that don’t make much sense upon rewatching. For starters, how exactly does Dek know how to bring a Kalisk head if he doesn’t even know if he can beat it? Just because Kwei’s ship left him well equipped does not mean he has any true plan to bring his proof after the hunt is complete. He’s lucky the ship was still one piece when crashing. It then felt strange that the live vines waited for him to unload the majority of his weaponry for  him to be vulnerable and intercept. He’s just as vulnerable with it on him if you’re sneaking up on him. Also, are there still Yautja that hunt in trios like in Predators? If Dek claims they hunt alone, then I’m wondering if he ever learned of his kind having a blood feud so long ago. I know Thia means well when asking what she should be doing when passing through the razor grass, but she could’ve told him how to go around since he was hungry and could’ve avoided at least one challenge out of the bone bison and the Luna bug back to back. If anything, Dek could’ve collected some razor grass rather than wait for the climax to do so. And in such a future, Weyland-Yutani should’ve had programs that synths from having a conscience if they don’t want any rogue ones because not doing that is as problematic as continuing to waste resources on wanting to weaponize aliens however they’re thinking. There should even be a connection between synths where they can sense which goes offline because that would help them better strategize against various threats. Heck, I even think it’s on Tessa taking too long to shoot her shot at Dek with the cargo loader mech. If you can ignore these things, then you’re still set for a blast of a sci fi action flick. In short, Predator: Badlands is another change of scenery that does wonders for the franchise by being unpredictable yet badass entertainment. If you’re a Predator fan that wanted a futuristic setting, look no further with this entry.