Review: Prey on Disney+ the Predator reboot that leaves others for dead

Disney has been systematically buying up major film and television franchises over the decades.

They own The Muppets now.

They own Winnie the Pooh.

They paid George Lucas a crazy amount to own Star Wars, but they've certainly made their money back on that one.

When they bought out the film studio 20th Century Fox from the Murdoch empire a few years back, one of the successful film franchises that came with the deal was Predator, the Arnold Schwarzenegger film from 1987 that made a fortune and spawned a half-dozen sequels.

Prey, viewable on their streaming platform Disney+, is a prequel of sorts, with one of the deadly alien Predator hunters turning up in frontier America of the 1700s.

It is the Northern Great Plains, Comanche country, and Naru (Amber Midthunder) dreams of joining her brother as a hunter for their tribe, but her family expect her to take over her mother's role making medicines.

Naru knows she has the skills her brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers) and his friends are lauded for, and she demonstrates them capably when it is just herself and her loyal dog Sarii, but when she first accompanies her brother on a hunting excursion, she knocks herself out on a rock.

Her Comanche tribe are seeing the signs that there is a large predator around that might pose a threat.

This is certainly true in a number of ways, with an angry and territorial grizzly bear hunting in the area, and with the danger of French colonists encroaching on Comanche land with their sense of violent entitlement.

But Naru is reading some signs that nobody else seems to see, a predator like no other.

When it tears through some of her tribe's hunting party, Naru feels it is up to her to go on the offensive and keep her tribe safe.

With Prey, director Dan Trachtenberg very effectively regenerates a brand that had overstayed its welcome.

It is light on dialogue, tight on performance and choreography and cinematography in some beautiful and pristine American landscapes as shot by Jeff Cutter.

The single-focus screenplay by Trachtenberg and Patrick Aison recycles a handful of the iconic lines and moments from the 1987 film such as "If it bleeds, we can kill it".

There are other big-screen moments Trachtenberg recycles, with an extended scene with the bear having a strong Revenant vibe, but enjoyably so.

The Comanche characters are understood by us as their dialogue is in English.

When the French colonisers appear, their French dialogue makes their differentness stand out.

Their violence and awfulness goes some small way along the path to redress the old cowboys and Indians tropes of early Hollywood cinema.

The colonisers aren't the good guys and this just makes their interactions when they come to the attention of the Predator all the more delicious.

By delicious, I mean quite grisly.

If your kids are old enough to sit through a bit of onscreen fantasy violence, this is a great (older) family film.

It has a strong female lead, the bad guys getting a comeuppance and, as Geoffrey Rush says in Shakespeare in Love, a bit with a dog.

Naru's story could have stood on its own as a lovely piece of period filmmaking.

But the incorporation of the sci-fi alien hunter element into this story is brilliant, and Midthunder's performance holds this film together.

There are strong performances from the rest of the cast - First Nations and French colonisers alike.

However, no character other than Naru gets much more than a veneer of character depth.

The burning question that is left for me after enjoying this film as much as I did is this: as this is a Disney film, does that make Amber Midthunder's Naru a Disney Princess?

I'd buy that doll.

Disney also produced a version of the film in full Comanche language, which is an impressive step towards inclusiveness.