The Predator

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The Predator is the fourth film in the Predator franchise. Shane Black co-wrote this film alongside Fred Dekker (the man who directed The Monster Squad). Black also served as the film's director. As much as I love Shane Black, and as much as I was anticipating this movie, it was a pretty mixed bag. The performances in the movie are good (Boyd Holbrook and Olivia Munn serve as standouts). However, some of the characters in the film feel underutilized. For example, Jake Busey appears in the movie as the son of Gary Busey's character from Predator 2. This was something that interested me in the movie when I had first heard about it happening. Ultimately, he only appears in one scene, and has no development to him whatsoever. A lot of the characters feel thin. The soldiers in this movie have quirks instead of personality. If they weren't played by people like Thomas Jane and Keegan-Michael Key, I wouldn't be able to tell you a thing about them. Hell, their names are brought up multiple times, and I struggled to remember which name belonged to which character. The humor was incredibly hit and miss, with more misses than hits (something I never expected out of a Shane Black script). Every time Keegan-Michael Key cracked a joke, I just didn't laugh. The action scenes are probably the best parts of the movie. They are actually very well handled. The characters that Holbrook, Munn, and Jacob Tremblay play are actually the characters who seem like they have the most development to them, and really were the only characters that I found myself invested in in any way. A lot of the reviews I've seen for this movie said it was a giant mess. I see where those reviews are coming from, but i don't know if I can go that far. It may seem like I'm bashing on this movie, and that's not my goal. I didn't hate this movie, I just didn't love it either. My feelings towards The Predator are more mixed than anything else.

5 / 10