Predator Badlands (2025) Movie Review

Predator Badlands is a movie which comes directed by Dan Trachtenberg who some may know as the director of Prey (2022). This movie stars Elle Fanning and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi. This movie has a run time of 1 hour and 47 minutes.

This was one of the movies I was most looking forward to this year. I am a fan of both the Alien and Predator movies and have been increasingly enjoying all the recent additions to both the Predator and Alien universes. I really enjoyed Alien Earth on Disney+ recently and since it just finished I was excited to see this on the big screen.

Predator Badlands’ director Dan Trachtenberg is no stranger to the Predator universe, he directed Prey (2022) just recently and I think everybody loved that movie, it did very well when it was released on streaming. So it’s good to see that he got to have another go here with Predator Badlands.

This movie is different to previous predator movies because for the first time we have the Predator as the main character and he’s not a villain this time. This time, the journey is about a young outcast on a quest to find the ultimate adversary in the Badlands. The story is good, the director has set this movie up as a total action experience though, so it is just essentially about watching the Predator fight monsters on the planet until he battles a really tough one.

The CGI is good, most of the movie fight scenes are decent. There’s a lot of gore, but it’s more about killing monsters than humans this time around. On the planet the Predator encounters an Android with no legs and she becomes kind of like a guide on his journey. Helping him along so he can complete the quest. This story mechanic is something more common in mythology maybe, but instead of a God giving guidance it’s an Android in this movie.

I actually really enjoyed this movie. Since the Android is in human form, the performance was done by Elle Fanning and she did great in this. Somehow the interactions with the Predator, who was played by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi and was mostly CGI, were smooth.

When the movie ended, I was actually hoping that it would continue into a sequel because I liked the characters in this. I did find though that I was more interested in following the journey of the Android in the next movie though, not necessarily the Predator. I guess I would probably prefer to watch a more human character. Even though they did try to humanise the Predator, he’s got more face expressions and emotions than any previous version. He’s still a monster. I would be interested to see a sequel to see what could be done with these two characters.

Overall this is a movie to go and see if you are a fan of the Alien or Predator universe and you want to see the lore expanded even more than it has ever been in the past. It’s also a movie to go and see if you’re looking for a action packed Sci-Fi experience. The story is not the reason to see this one, it’s a simple hero’s journey experience. But sometimes that’s all you need to have a fun weekend out at the movies. Happy to recommend this movie to fans, I really enjoyed it and might watch it again.