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PREY (2019)
Director: Franck Khalfoun Cast: Logan Miller, Kristine Froseth, Jolene Anderson, Jerrica Lai, Phodiso Dintwe, Anthony Jensen MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:25 Release Date: 9/27/19 (limited) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 26, 2019 At first, Prey is about grief and coping with it. Then, it's about survival in the wild and commiserating over loss. Finally, it's about escaping from and fighting against a demonic entity that has killed a lot of people and will continue to do so. David Coggeshall and director Franck Khalfoun's screenplay is, obviously, all over the place, which might be more forgivable if the movie's ultimate destination weren't so dull and slight. The filmmakers don't delve into their earlier concepts, either. The opening sequence has Toby (Logan Miller) ignoring his father (Anthony Jensen), who is murdered by masked criminals later. Sometime after, Toby is in a boat at sea, as part of a program for teenagers struggling with issues. The last part of the program is for each participant to be left alone on an uninhabited island for three days. Toby soon learns he isn't alone on his. Once introduced, Coggeshall and Khalfoun mostly toss aside their protagonist's grief and possible feelings of guilt over the death of his father. The rest of the story follows Toby's relationship with Madeleine (Kristine Froseth), a 16-year-old who has been living on the island since she was a child. She teaches him basic survival skills, and then the mystery of what happened, involving some island native and Christian missionaries and Madeleine's family, arises—along with a mysterious, shadowy, and horned figure who/that shows up for some half-hearted startles. At a certain point, this story becomes exclusively about the enigmatic threat—either human, supernatural, or some combination of the two. Flashbacks to Toby's youth and the murder of his father only serve to remind us that there could be an emotional core to this tale, but the filmmakers would rather have Toby and other characters, who arrive after the three days are up, being stalked and hunted by the killer/monster. As for the climactic revelation about the nature of the threat, it's just another thing that pushes the goals of this material further from the setup and toward a routine, predictable showdown with a generic monster. Prey might seem unfocused and uncertain, but to be fair, the filmmakers know exactly what they want their movie to be by the third act. The movie they want it to be, though, just isn't that involving, that scary, or of a piece with what has come before it. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for violence, bloody images, terror, and brief strong language)
