The Predator

Here’s what nobody seems to get about the original Predator. It wasn’t a sci-fi movie, and it wasn’t an action movie. It was a horror movie.

It’s an easy mistake to make. It stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, the epitome of 80 action movies. It features an alien invading our planet and murdering people with high tech weaponry. It’s clearly action/sci-fi, right?

No. Because like that other Schwarzenegger vehicle, The Terminator, while the trappings of Predator are action and science fiction, the plot points are all straight up horror movie.

The cast all fill horror movie roles. Dillon is the Bitch Queen, and you root for the monster to get him. Poncho is the Harbinger, the one who sees what everyone else dismissed. Blain is the Jock, Hawkins is the Nerd. Mac is the Black Guy. And they’re all killed off, one by one, until you get to the Virgin, Dutch, played by Schwarzenegger.

Sure, Dutch isn’t pure because he abstains from sex and drugs; no, he’s pure because he abstains from unnecessary killing. His men are a rescue squad, not assassins.

Aside from the initial raid of the jungle compound, the plot of Predator is beat-for-beat a horror movie. We have the “something’s not right” moment when Dutch finds the previous rescue team, skinned and hanging from the trees. We have the fake scare when the wild boar runs into the camp. And we have our merry band of sinners, picked off one by one, until the slasher reveals himself in the end, and is defeated by the only pure character left.

This is what made Predator so good. It was a genre mashup, a horror movie masquerading as something else. And that’s something that 2018’s The Predator just doesn’t get.

We don’t watch a Predator movie to hear about global warming, or the Predator’s genetic engineering program, or how Autism is the next step in human evolution that will allow the Predators to conquer the universe or something. We watch a Predator movie to see men who can kill anything on this planet picked off one by one by a creature from another planet.

We watch a Predator movie to be scared, and The Predator just doesn’t deliver.