Prey

A former basketball player and longtime butcher, Dane DiLiegro has found his calling playing creatures in Hollywood.

He signed a series of one-year contracts with teams in Italy (his father’s grandparents were from Gaeta and Canosa di Puglia) and Israel (his mother is Jewish). “I was a rebounder, a defender, a screen-setter,” he said. He noted that there were only a handful of performers in Hollywood with DiLiegro’s build, flexibility and athleticism, and that they got nearly all the monster parts. The following week DiLiegro flew to L.A. to pitch his food show, look at apartments and check out a couple of special effects shops. “The idea was to create content so that I could eventually host a culinary travel TV show.” The 34-year-old DiLiegro is not the kind of actor who can be hired to play in the background of a scene: he can’t blend into a crowd shot. “You have to learn to live in discomfort,” DiLiegro said. To bear the weight of a 65-pound suit and 40 pounds of animatronic equipment, he’s got to stay thin and robust. “As a kid, I’d prowl around my house on all fours, like a beast,” he said. DiLiegro has quickly become one of Hollywood’s top “creature actors.” Sheathed in form-fitting, foam-and-latex get-ups, he appears on-screen in the guise of ghouls, space aliens and whatever a screenwriter can dream up. “I shot the entire movie essentially blind, with my head in the neck of this being,” he said. “A rite of passage for all creature actors.” “It felt like a sort of monster bar mitzvah for me,” he recalled.

Predator prequel Prey features the creature's first visit to Earth — and a surprising tie-in to the original films.

And as for the connection to the Predator mythology at large...well, that's revealed during Naru's encounter with the fur trappers. With the pistol now appearing in Prey, it's a clever way for Trachtenberg to pay homage to the previous Predator films while also staying true to the film's time period. If Trachtenberg and screenwriter Patrick Aison return for a sequel with Midthunder, the idea of Naru having to fend off multiple Predators could definitely make for great sequel fodder. Victorious, Naru returns to her tribe with the Predator's head and is made the war chief. Despite Naru's efforts to warn them, the members of her tribe fall to the Predator's superior weaponry. This has led to critical acclaim, and is extremely fitting given that this year marks the 35th anniversary of the original Predator film.

This article contains Prey spoilers. Who knew the secret to the Predator franchise's future was to always go back in time?

In essence, the animated sequence suggests that Naru’s victory over the Predator became the stuff of legend and oral tradition: a story that was passed down from one generation to the next, including eventually on ledger paper. And given how the lone Predator in Prey can be viewed as a metaphor for European incursions into this land… At most, we’ve reached a kind of intermission before the real test comes when the Predators return to Comanche lands in force. This weekend’s Prey is the culmination of years of passion, and years of planning, from the filmmaker who wrested the Predator movies away from their recent and failed experiments of franchise-building in the future. The “post-credits scene” in Prey is technically neither after the credits or a full scene. however there is more to the story if you paid close attention to the end credits…

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The director puts his faith in a relative newcomer to shoulder the movie. At every increasing moment of this journey, Naru experiences a change in front of the camera, and it’s not just talked about in passing. Naru (Amber Midthunder) is a Comanche woman who aims to become a warrior by embarking on the “kühtaamia,” a rite of passage ritual where the hunter hunts the hunter who hunts them.

Prey is the freshest take on a Predator movie in decades, yet it still managed to subtly pay homage to every other mainline Predator film in the franchise.

We really were embracing the lore that was present and telling a story that is somewhat similar to the story of the original film in its structure. Frankly, there was no Easter egg – maybe except for one in particular – that we had the preconceived notion of trying to jam it in. It’s easily one of the best Predator movies of all time.

Prey, directed by Dan Trachtenberg and starring the incredible Amber Midthunder, takes the Predator story back to the 18th century.

Her fragility as a human being in the face of the overwhelming threats surrounding her is also her greatest strength. In the tradition of horror movies like Black Christmas (1974), which ends on a note of uncertainty and despair, this film has a similar ending that can be read as either bleak or resilient. It uses inspiration of earlier movies to create a story (drawing on the tracker character, Billy Sole, and later in Predator 2, the discovery of a 17th-century pistol in the ship) and how it engages with ideas of colonization and masculinity. So much of the film’s strength lies in the writing of Naru and Amber Midthunder’s charismatic performance. Her brother is one of the most skilled hunters and warriors in the tribe, but she struggles to prove herself. Thinking outside the box put Jason in Space. Thinking outside the box led to Michael Myers killing off Laurie Strode in the opening sequence of Halloween: Resurrection. Thinking outside the box doesn’t usually end well.

Dan Trachtenberg's new Predator prequel movie Prey is out now on Hulu, and it's getting rave reviews. Set 300 years before the iconic 1987 original starring ...

And that is an ominous sign for the Comanche who have it at the end of Prey. This means that another Predator visits the Great Plains where Naru’s tribe is located at some point in the future. The pistol proves a vital tool in Naru’s fight against the Predator, and when she returns victorious, she gives it to the former war chief of her settlement. But once you stop to think about it a little bit more…this has some seriously dark implications for the future of Naru and her companions. During the course of her adventure, she and her brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers) run afoul of poachers in the wilderness. While Prey is a groundbreaking film that keeps viewers on their toes, it still adheres to the structure of most Predator movies: the Predator (Dane DiLiegro) kills a lot of people until only Naru remains to face it on her own.

Dan Trachtenberg has created a bold return to form for the "Predator" franchise in "Prey," a film that follows a young female Comanche warrior looking to ...

For now, though, "Prey" ends its story with the end of the Kühtaamia, and Naru being honored by her tribe. Despite all of that, Naru completed the Kühtaamia, and now she seeks to protect her people, warning them of the trappers in the area. With the Predator stuck in the mud and missing an arm, Naru mutters the words her brother taught her, with her prey now in her sights: "This is as far as you go. It would certainly be a continuation of the revisionism the film had already established to that point. This moment is bittersweet, because while Naru was able to outsmart the Predator, the terror it wrought upon her tribe and the fur trappers left many of her fellow warriors dead. While it is repeatedly shown throughout the film that the Predator is overwhelmingly stronger than Naru, she uses her swift reflexes and smaller stature to throw the Predator off balance, with Naru even stealing the Predator's spear and dismembering the creature. The Comanche Nation is proudly at the forefront of it all, grounding the conflict in a tradition, celebrating its people's rich history, and giving viewers an opportunity to educate themselves about Indigenous cultures. The third act is a visceral hunt, a deadly game of cat and mouse cleverly put together by Tratchenberg, with Naru outsmarting the Predator at nearly every turn. The events of the film serve as Naru's trial, going through various encounters with the Predator and gaining a greater understanding of how the creature operates. A heartfelt moment in the film's beginning has Taabe encourage her to "bring it home," referring to the lion she unsuccessfully hunts. The overarching narrative of "Prey" is tied together by one tradition: "Kühtaamia." Trachtenberg cleverly blends the Comanche Nation backdrop with the hunting motifs present in every "Predator" film, resulting in an engaging and thrilling story with a beating heart at its center that feels like a historical celebration of an underrepresented people as well as a kick-a** survival thriller. More than that, the film tells an intimate story of one hunter in a society that overlooks her because of her gender.

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Directed by Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane), it’s a prequel to the Predator series that stays true to the essence of the original – stylishly violent, stickily graphic, impossibly tense – while also working satisfyingly as a self-contained entity. But ingrained sexism works in her favour: the assumption that as a woman she’s not a credible threat turns out to be her secret weapon. So often it’s just a cynical means to squeeze a little more juice out of an already dead and desiccated franchise, or a reboot that paints a layer of self-referential irony over a much-loved original.

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It’s a classic, but nostalgia does some amount of work here looking back, and I can’t say for sure because I haven’t seen Arnold’s version in probably 15 years. I cannot speak highly enough about the two central performances from Prey’s indigenous actors, Amber Midthunder and Dakota Beavers, where this should be a star-making turn for both of them. Danger lurks nearby as French trappers are starting to harvest game for skins, and only Naru seems to understand that an even greater threat looms, the mysterious, unseen, intergalactic stalker.