Prey
Prey
It is necessary to clarify that Prey is not to be regarded as the Predator film with this same title or Dick Maas’s lion loose in Amsterdam thriller, or even the 2007 film about a family of tourists who are being hunted by lions, or any other of the numerous action or slasher films with that name. This Prey concerns American missionaries Andrew (Ryan Phillippe, Wish Upon, Cruel Intentions) and Sue (Mena Suvari, The Accursed, American Pie) who come to live in some African village.
Andrew, one of the main characters, is not having the best time of his life either. He is a physician and lost a small boy in surgery due to the fact that the much needed medical materials did not come on time. It gets even worse for him when it is reported that he and his wife leave the place quickly since Boko Haram fighters are marching towards the village.
More horrifyingly for the surviving characters – Grun‘s (Emile Hirsch, Son, The Darkest Hour) Tyler, his friends Max (Tristan Thompson, The Tutor, Mending the Line), Chrissy (Michaela Sasner, Deltopis, Natural Disasters) and their guide Thabo (Jeremy Tardy, Bone Tomahawk, Voodoo Macbeth) – Grun is preparing to fly them away from the area. Fleeing for their lives, they take a ride on a plane that appears to be highly untrustworthy. There is no doubt: It is highly unreliable. The airplane crashes in the wildlife preserve in the Kalahari Desert, the film was to be called Kalahari. Surrounded by lions, leopards, hyena, and the likes, the film’s survivors had to contend with extremists and ravenous beasts.
There are lions and babies, and March somewhere head to head action in Mikunda Michael Dewil’s (The Immaculate Room, Vehicle 19) film, but alternatively, the lions head into them gracefully without care. However writer and director Michael Dewil M (The Immaculate Room, Vehicle 19) doesn’t show it head on; instead, he purposely divides these survivors into two teams for the sake of suspense and puts them in two pieces to waste time without any particular cause, showing towards each of their left hands. This makes all the sense in the world as the very first lion attack occurs with the camera conveniently stationed elsewhere. So that’s not a good sign.
But not in this case, as the progress is not that fast, and the only thing we have to look forward till the next encounter is a very familiar lion roar and a biting snake. We mostly have some shots of people searching and talking a lot, so it is no surprise that we discover HirschDocter as the one who could not have delivered any medical supplies to the oasis as he was out there to bring in illegal ivory products.
Unfortunately, very few of the characters in Prey are those who command sympathy and as such tend to be among those who do not last until the end of the movie. Even our so-called protagonist increasingly sinks into depression because his faith in God and his path has seemingly vanished. By the time the extremist army, all three of them, appear on the scene, I was yearning for fireworks and blasting so the war could be over fast.
Sadly we still have another half an hour comprising of 30 minutes of continuity errors involving prisoners that are not bound, a scenario where some wedgie fighters steel away, strays of fires that are far better than calculated ones and the pacifist who not only has to administer those but also take lives to save more, to bear with.
After I had read that Prey actually did use real lions instead of CGI, I had certain expectations of watching at least some trained animal vs stuntman scenes. To my dissatisfaction, every single animal attack occurs off screen and the big cats are just stock footage. Only a snake and a scorpion were the ones that were able to be in the same shot with the actors, the rest of the animals are nowhere to be seen. Yes, it’s an animal attack film with no animal attacks.
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- Genre: Action, Thriller
- Country: United States
- Director: Mukunda Michael Dewil
- Cast: Ryan Phillippe, Emile Hirsch, Mena Suvari
