There are a lot of reviews here defending this film, calling it the "Second best Predator film!" in the franchise, and throwing around a lot of buzzwords for anyone who doesn't like the film. There are also an incalculable amount of individuals defending the main character, Naru, saying she relied on her wits and tactics to win fights, and that's what makes her believable. That's only partially true.

See, Naru literally has the strength of three men (if you watch the film you'll know what I mean). Can survive physical traumas no other character in the Predator franchise was able to survive, and can move as fast as a small sedan. She does use some tactics, but most of all her feats are of the physical variety, and literally in the realm of being a super human the likes of which would make Captain America jealous.

Without spoiling anything, it's simply that Naru survives things she shouldn't survive, and can do things multiple times outside her weight class to the point where the suspension of disbelief is not only shattered but grounded into dust and scattered among the four corners of the wind. For everyone who defends Naru as a character, just ask them some simple questions: how did she recover so quickly? How did she manage to out-power men? And why was she able to survive things nothing else in the film could survive?

The responses will be a smattering of equivocation and justifications that don't hold up under scrutiny, and that's where this film's biggest problem comes in: it doesn't hold up under scrutiny.

Another big problem is that no one seems to be properly afraid of the Predator, even during an era where superstitions were mightily high. Naru shows no fear of anything, even in many life-threatening situations, which seems completely opposite of someone her age. I'm sure someone will justify why, but I would instead point out that this just pulls you out of the film as being nonsensical and unrealistic. Why does this teenage girl have a deathwish and fears nothing? Constantly trying to engage in situations where things are purposely trying to kill her?

A good counterbalance to Naru is the daughter from Shawn Linden's film Hunter Hunter. I didn't like the second half of that film but the first half was brilliant. Why? Because it was grounded, realistic, and intriguing. Also, it was completely believable that the daughter was that good a hunter; we saw how she trained with her father, in a realistic manner. We saw that even with all her training since a small child, she was still prone to mistakes, and how the fight/flight/freeze mechanism came into play when her wits and abilities were put to the test. That's how you pull the audience in and keep them rooting for the character; when they're grounded in realism.

The problem here is that Prey is rife with anachronisms from the modern era. How Naru behaves, how she talks back to everyone, and even how she's depicted in never being afraid of anything (although, to that end, almost no one in the film seems to properly show a realistic kind of fear given their circumstances).

The anachronisms combined with the super-human abilities just takes away from the film, and that's a real shame because if this film was grounded in realism, it actually WOULD be the second best Predator film. Why? Because it's filmed quite well; Trachtenberg knows his way around a lens, and he makes Canada actually look like a pristine northern forest from 18th century North America. Lots of fantastic wide-angle shots and great color composition help give the film a nice, authentic look. Sound design is absolutely on-point, and the score isn't over-done or too nostalgic.

Unfortunately, the film is plagued by too many problems. They should have committed to having the Comanche speaking Comanche throughout the film (as this would have brought the film to another level of quality and authenticity, much like Mel Gibson's Apocalyptico), they should not have had modern-day behaviors that seem mirrored after social media expectations of characterizations, and they should have given Naru realistic feats appropriate for her age, height, and weight, as that would have done wonders.

For me, I was willing to give this film a shot, but the more I watched, and the more I thought about it after watching, the lower the score became. It's essentially a good film marred by its own undoing. A lead character who is depicted as always being right (even the film manages to retroactively throw that in as it progresses), and having her depicted as having super-human abilities, while outmatched and out-manned, just took me completely out of the film. Also in the original Predator, Arnold's character Dutch did ZERO damage to the Predator in their hand-to-hand fight, and Dutch was at the brink of death in just a few hits from his over-sized foe. And none of Dutch's traps worked against the Predator save for a contingency trap that he used after another trap failed. Keep that in mind when watching the final showdown in Prey.

In the land of make-believe its unbelievable. This is the least entertaining, and most ridiculous of the Predator movies. The main charter has a chip on her shoulder that makes her unlikeable. She goes from entitled Instagram model to an axe-wielding master ninja in just hours. Another of many things that bothered me about this movie was how she instantly understands the technical aspects of alien weaponry enough to use it against the Predator. Really? The story makes no sense. The Predators have always gone after the most dangerous threats, but for some unknown reason, this Predator seems out to get her.

Ooops, must have had the wrong opinion on a political movie again, the staff at IMDb are doing the insta-ratio. "What, you don't conform to our party politics, well dislike the moment after you post."

LOL, have fun, that hasn't stopped me.

So... "If it bleeds," and you are supposed to roll your eyes back like a shark in a feeding frenzy and applause because 'member-berries. Only in the first one, there was actually a reason to say it. In this one it was forced in.

But then Prey stars "Strong Female Lead," who is playing "Strong Female Lead," and you can tell what her check marks are because everything comes easy to her. EVERYTHING.

Her tribe is bad because they don't want her to be a hunter, even though she is the best hunter ever. And she is the best tracker ever. And she is the best fighter ever. And she is the smartest person ever.

So you know she is going to win, instantly, and she does. Her tribe gets brutally punished by the Predator for not realizing that she is the greatest person in the world and good at everything.

Only some of the tribe actually does pretty noble things... that aren't seen as noble in the script.

Until evil white people come who are playing the role of evil white people because all white people are absolute evil and the film needs to add them in to show white evilness because the predator is an alien, so you don't get the racial all white people are evil messaging if it is just the predator vs a group of Native American hunters.

So evil white people have to be awkwardly shoe-horned into the plot that was already, kind of, going well despite the addition of Strong Female Lead playing Strong Female Lead and checking off boxes without actually having a personality.

Meanwhile her brother actually does some pretty heroic, selfless, and respectable things in the film, that hardly get recognized because of Strong Female Lead's absolute perfectness.

The truth is, you have seen this before, it's every other PC check-marked movie that has come out in the past 4 years, and the check-marked characters are just as interchangeable. It might as well be Captain Marvel v the Predator, you literally wouldn't notice the difference.