Posted by Joshua Tyler | Published
Rapists wants to be a sequel to John McTiernan's 1987 film The Predator it's worth it, and while it's better than most sequels ever got, I'm not sure that's saying much. After Predator 2 as well as AvP movies, the bar was very low.
Still, give director Nimrod Antal's 2010 take on the franchise: It tries. It really does happen. That's more than you can say for some previous efforts. There is an obvious love for icon hunters in the content, as well as a passion for the original film, which they intend to follow directly. It's enough to make it worth watching, but at the time, it wasn't as much as the franchise's audience deserved.
Unlike all the other Predator revival attempts, this one at least had a good idea for the story. It begins with an unconscious person, free falling from a high place. He woke up in the air and started screaming.
It's a clever way to start the movie, or it would be, if this scene was even remotely scary. The camera falls with him, descending at crazy speeds due to the strong winds and high altitudes. This incident should be feared. Or if it's not scary, it should at least be fun. It's not, and it's just the first of many scenes that seem like they should really work on paper, but somehow, when they end up on screen, they don't.
Part of the first reason The Predator he is so beautiful that he is scary. It's more of a horror movie than an action movie, and even though you never get to know the characters in it intimately, you root for them to survive.
It is a brutal film, full of violence and violence, which heightens the reality of the object. He believes that the Dutch and his team are being followed by some kind of unstoppable killing machine, and it's very scary. He cares about the Dutchman not because he has many heart-to-heart talks with his soldiers, but because he is such a bad person. Rapists it tries hard to repeat all that but it can't.
There is no time limit for your seat anywhere Rapists. It's not scary. Not even a little bit. It never gets better than this freefall opening: crazy things keep happening on screen, things that seem like they should be fun, but somehow never are.
Antal doesn't really seem to have this kind of storytelling ability. He points his camera at what's going on, but he can't or doesn't care to do anything to create tension.
It is clear from the beginning what will happen. Take the first episode The Predatoradd a few aliens, and make the human characters less sympathetic, and you have it Rapists.
On paper, it shouldn't be like this. We are told repeatedly throughout the film that this plot is unique. The first movie was about special forces who fell into the forest where they met a single Predator. This one is about a group of assassins, who get kidnapped and fall into an alien world where they are being hunted for sport.
But aside from some crazy moments, the killers act like any military force, and aside from one scene where we see a bunch of strange moons, the alien planet looks exactly like that jungle Earth we saw running around back in 1987.
Rapists contains more than one Predator, and that should be different. Except we rarely see more than two of them on screen at any given time. Most of the fights in the movie are one Predator versus one person.
The charms it sets out to honor the original film by echoing it, but instead ends up repeating it. It's a well-made movie, but you won't be entertained, amused by it, or scared by it. Adrien Brody is an incredibly convincing badass, and the sets are real builds rather than just lame CGI explosions. That's great, but a lot of it feels archaic in a way that the original 80s movie still doesn't.
Despite these problems, if you are a person The Predator fan, if you missed it the first time, I would recommend the live stream The charms. A brief appearance by Laurence Fishburne gives the movie enough life to keep you interested, and even if it's not shot in the most exciting way, the movie has a few good ideas.
Predator vs. Samurai? It's every sci-fi fan's dream. You will see it, enjoy it, and forget about it. Good enough.
Rapists is currently available to stream on Hulu.
