In 1710, a young aspiring female Comanche warrior (Amber Midthunder) gets a chance to prove her mettle as a mysterious, invisible enemy haunts the forest. It turns out Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t the first soldier to fight the alien predator. This prequel reuses pretty much the same formula as the 1987 Predator, but the film gets a shot in the arm from its historic setting, Midthunder’s solid performance as a very capable, axe-wielding teenager and well-crafted showdowns between the alien and his prey, including the animal predators of the land. A clever idea from the man who made the Cloverfield sequel work so well.

2022-U.S. VOD. 99 min. Color. Widescreen. Produced by John Davis, Marty Ewing, John Fox, Jhane Myers. Directed by Dan Trachtenberg. Screenplay: Patrick Aison. Cast: Amber Midthunder (Naru), Dakota Beavers (Taabe), Dane DiLegro (Predator), Stormee Kipp, Michelle Thrush, Julian Black Antelope.

Last word: “Several things were driving me towards making this. I was very inspired by Mad Max: Fury Road for finally throwing the gauntlet down and saying, ‘You can make a movie that is all action and it still be a great film.’ I was also drawn to that challenge. Could I make a movie that is primarily told through action, but also have some emotionality to it? So I thought, ‘Well, maybe if I could take the engine of a sports film and inject it into this movie, it could really have heart.'” (Trachtenberg, Games Radar)