Predator: Badlands gets you with its psychedelic thunderbolts. This one appears to be running towards something rather than escaping from it. Dan Trachtenberg broadens it outward—same basic pulse, larger sky.
Elle Fanning is a real standout here. She slips into Thia, a Weyland-Yutani synthetic, and bounces between this upbeat field assistant and someone locked into cold mission mode. The real issue isn’t about her programming—it’s whether anyone can actually tell what she is. Every time she shifts gears, it feels almost like a pulse. When she’s patching up a wounded Yautja in the middle of an alien downpour, you can’t speckle the difference between her and a human. Then there’s Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi as Dek. He’s all scars and silence. Right from the start, he lets his eyes do most of the talking. You get the sense he’s an outcast, someone who lives by a code that hits you in the gut. The way these two connect—it’s careful, wordless, and then, out of nowhere, surprisingly tender—keeps the film grounded, even when things get brutal.
The world itself is a character: bioluminescent dunes, ancient temples that hum with history, a Genesis artefact that threatens to rewrite both species. Action arrives in waves you can map—mud-slick ambushes, a three-tier temple gauntlet where choreography meets creature suit wizardry, a zero-G corridor clash that leaves bruises on the screen. PG-13 never felt this close to the bone.
Sure, ambition sometimes faces a barrier. Certain CGI skies look dark and cloudy, human supporting actors are only faint traces, and one shift from laughter to sadness occurs just too quickly. Nevertheless, these are merely the growing pains. The bittersweet feelings take many forms: a campfire confession, a clan brand on the fake skin, a sunrise shared by a hunter and a machine.
When Thia grins—real, and not programmed—one accepts it. Badlands is the first Predator sequel to actually grow up while still keeping its edge. It nods to the 1987 classic, pushes past Prey’s stripped-down style, and opens the door to a new shared universe. With Trachtenberg in charge, the franchise feels both safe and full of fresh ideas—time for the next hunt.
IWMBuzz rates it 4/5 stars.
