Predator: Badlands (dir. Dan Trachtenberg)

by Jack Martin | Nov 8, 2025

Certificate: 12A

Running Time: 107 mins

UK Distributor: 20th Century Studios

UK Release Date: 7 November 2025

WHO’S IN PREDATOR: BADLANDS?

Elle Fanning, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Dan Trachtenberg (director, writer, editor), Patrick Aison (writer), John Davis, Brent O’Connor, Ben Rosenblatt and Marc Toberoff (producers), Sarah Schachner and Benjamin Wallfisch (composers), Jeff Cutter (cinematographer), Stefan Grube (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A young Predator (Schuster-Koloamatangi) sets out to prove himself on a remote planet…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON PREDATOR: BADLANDS?

After Disney acquired the studio formerly known as 20th Century Fox and all its adult-oriented properties, among them the rather intense and often quite gory Alien and Predator franchises, the fear was that they would be severely toned down to appease the larger studio’s wider audience. So far, neither series – both connected by a Xenomorph Easter egg in Predator 2 and, of course, the actual Alien vs. Predator movies – has suffered too greatly by the Mouse’s gloved grasp, with the Predator franchise in particular gaining new life after director Dan Trachtenberg came on board with the streaming hit Prey and the animated anthology Predator: Killer of Killers from earlier this year.

On paper, it sounds like Trachtenberg’s live-action follow-up Predator: Badlands is the closest that the series has yet come to full Disney-fication. Its stronger action-adventure vibe, akin to some of Disney’s LucasFilm properties (namely The Mandalorian; the film even comes with not one but two Baby Yoda equivalents), over the more traditional formula of humans being hunted by the alien warrior is already cause for concern, but none more so than the horrifying notion that, for the first time in the famously violent Predator’s solo film history, it’s been slapped with a PG-13/12A rating.

But even though all of that sounds like a nightmare to those hoping that the series would avoid becoming too family-friendly, Predator: Badlands works far more than it should, as Trachtenberg manages to create a fun blockbuster that, while not without some flaws, entertains with its firm commitment to a new direction that doesn’t betray the legacy of its central hunter.

In this film, the Predator is himself the protagonist, specifically a young Yautja named Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) who is considered among the weakest of his clan and, in a bid to prove his mettle, vows to head toward the deadly planet Genna and kill the feared Kalisk, a creature that is infamously unkillable. Upon arrival, Dek is almost immediately overpowered by the numerous organisms on the planet, from the flying pterodactyl-like “vultures” to the many types of flora and grass that are either alive or will slice you to pieces as soon as you graze through them. But soon he acquires a useful new tool in the form of Thea (Elle Fanning), a peppy yet literally legless android from the Weyland-Yutani Corporation – yet another Easter egg from the Alien movies in a Predator film – who offers to help Dek locate the Kalisk so that he may destroy it and take home a trophy to his brutish father, though they’ve got plenty of other obstacles to get through beforehand, namely another Elle Fanning-shaped android named Tessa who’s, well, far less approachable than the other one.

To first address the seemingly streamlined violence that the lower-than-usual rating suggests, the only reason for that is because Predator: Badlands technically has no humans and therefore no red blood to splatter all over the place. Other than that, there’s nothing to truly suggest that this movie is any less gory than the others, since there are scenes where heads are blown clean off, torsos are melted to their core by what might as well be sulphuric acid, and creatures are cut clean in half with some of their innards being held up in a show of glorious triumph. But don’t worry, so determines the MPA/BBFC, since all the blood you see is literally any other colour than red, which makes it okay for your kids to watch such gruesome insanity, so long as they also don’t cuss or do other naughty stuff as well (seriously, our film ratings system needs a significant overhaul). Trachtenberg, though, frames it all as though it truly was a higher-rated action flick, with efficient fight choreography showing the CG-heavy carnage with the efficiency and general awe of The Raid, and occasionally even the leaps in logic and physics of a Fast & Furious movie, though this purely sci-fi Predator flick is a lot more grounded in reality compared to some of the latter’s later entries.

As with both Prey and Predator: Killer of Killers beforehand, you can feel Trachtenberg’s passion for this universe and its lore, as the director gives it all a fresh and enjoyable energy that can only come from someone who legitimately thrives on seeing the Yautja be awesomely deadly whilst in action, but also in this case actually fleshed out beyond being just a simple alien killer. Early on, it’s established rather well why Dek is so determined to fulfil what should be an impossible mission, and Schuster-Koloamatangi’s performance – under heavy prosthetics and initially distracting CG jaws – is filled with an understandable ferociousness and resilience that makes you see this character as, for the first time in this franchise, a real hero. He’s also got great support in Elle Fanning, who is entirely believable as two vastly different “synths”, one of whom is filled with the kind of cheery eternal optimism that could have been fatally annoying in lesser hands but is made all the more adorable in Fanning’s, while the other is a rather chilling presence that the actor again nails to eerily remarkable and alluring effect.

In terms of flaws, it’s a fairly predictable movie, with certain reveals you can see coming from miles away, while the constant CGI can be rather overwhelming, especially since a lot of it doesn’t look as good as other movies of this kind. But the fact that Predator: Badlands works as well as it does, in spite of everything that could have made this an unbearably diluted entry in the franchise, is a testament to Trachtenberg’s courage to spice things up without completely removing what the Predator movies have become best known for.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Predator: Badlands is a risky venture into new territory for the franchise that works shockingly well thanks to filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg’s firm commitment to displaying fun (and still, despite what the lower rating may suggest, rather gory) action in a sci-fi universe he clearly loves, along characters he similarly enjoys following.