"There is disappointment in store for those hoping the Terrence Malick classic Badlands had been rebooted as a horror sci-fi, with Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek menaced by a great big space alien with a peculiar mouth. No: this is actually the umpteenth iteration of the Predator franchise, which has a roach-like unkillability itself, having started in 1987 with Arnold Schwarzenegger facing an extraterrestrial creature rustling and snarling in the Central American jungle."
"Predator: Badlands is just about kept from flatlining by Elle Fanning's effortless charm, though it shows what happens when the Predator in question must, in the service of narrative development, be humanised and made sympathetic and vulnerable and kinda nice? What happens is that it ceases to be the Predator, so something or someone else has inevitably to fill the Predator role."
"But Dek finds that two robot-human bioclone twins known as synths are on the Kalisk's trail as well, both played by Fanning. One is goofy, cutesy, fallible Thia, a kind of manic pixie dream synth who winds up having an odd-couple friendship with Dek. The other is a ruthlessly efficient dead-eyed Stepford ninja who winds up being the real hunter-killer and effectively negates the franchise's whole identity."
The film recycles the Predator franchise premise but centers on Dek, a sympathetic young Predator who flees his tribe to reclaim predatorial honour by hunting the Kalisk. Dek’s vulnerability and humanisation strip away the original creature’s menace, forcing the narrative to create new hunter figures. Two synth bioclone twins, both played by Elle Fanning, complicate the hunt: a fallible, whimsical Thia and a ruthless, efficient counterpart who becomes the true killer. Elle Fanning’s charm provides the film’s few strengths, but narrative pointlessness and a negation of the Predator’s core identity leave the movie depleted.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]