Predator: Badlands

★★½

M. 110 minutes

Perhaps it was inevitable we’d eventually get to see the universe through a Predator’s eyes. After all, there are only so many changes that can be rung on the simple plot of John McTiernan’s 1987 action classic, which saw Arnold Schwarzenegger battling a hulking, highly intelligent, mostly invisible alien who’d travelled to a Central American jungle to hunt humans.

Officially the seventh feature film in the series, Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator: Badlands follows a comparable hunting expedition on a planet far from Earth, undertaken by Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) a youthful Predator who’s left his invisibility cloak behind.

In case of doubt about whether we should be cheering him on, his underdog status is spelled out in a prologue set on

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