Predator: Badlands

Predator: Badlands

Director ~ Dan Trachtenberg

Writers ~ Patrick Aison, Dan Trachtenberg, Jim Thomas

2025,  United States-Australia-New Zealand-Canada-Germany

Stars ~ Elle Fanning, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, Ravi Narayan

Surely, we all came away from ‘Prey’ (2022) set in the 18th-century Great Plains saying, “If only the franchise was the Predator facing off against opponents across different eras!” – but it seems that that was exactly Dan Trachtenberg’s vision all along. Updated for modern concerns with a Ladies-Are-Badass-Too focus – the perpetual insistence on this instead of letting it be organic being the film’s weakness, depriving its protagonist of further depth – ‘Prey’s stripped-down gender-flip-the-original proved fun and satisfying. It felt taken back from the disappointments the franchise had taken with the action-toys-mashed-together trajectory merging with the Xenomorphs. And it shouldn’t be undervalued that Trachtenberg centred it on a Native American woman in the 1700s.

‘Predator: Killer of Killers’ (2025) proved an even greater a step forward: if nothing else, Trachtenberg is certainly trying to push what is a limited narrative starting point as much as he can. Having reinvigorated the premise with ‘Prey’, he offered an animated anthology utilising the exoticism of different eras. And again, it made sure the Women Warriors are represented. There was a lot of impressive animation – the World War 2 airplane-versus-spaceship battle being a highlight – although the introduction of time travel is maybe an unnecessary addition. It continued from Nimród Antal’s sufficient ‘Predators’ (2010) in taking things off world and broadening the range.

Having exhausted the Predator Throughout History angle with ‘Killer of Killers’, Trachtenberg obviously had the plan to explore the alien hunter culture. After all, the problem with its predecessor was that it was an anthology of the killer of killers getting beaten every time.

So, we open ‘Badlands’ with Predators talking to one another, but as it is all rooted in masculine Brother and Daddy Issues (shades especially of the first ‘Killer of Killers’ segment), there is nothing challenging, nothing unfamiliar to us. Rather, Dek’s mission to prove himself becomes increasingly convincing so that when he lands on a perilous planet to go hunting, it promised perhaps a silent odyssey of his killing and surviving his way across the planet. It would actually be a shame if humans turned up, I was thinking, so that I was disappointed when indeed a human face appeared. Even more disappointed that it was Elle Fanning as a perpetually irritating synthetic motormouth character, undermining any gravatas already built-up. It does the Odd Couple Funnies thing, and by the time a cutesy-but-lethal alien joined the odyssey, it was essentially ‘Shrek’ for ‘Predator’ fans.

Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi brings the necessary physicality to Dek, and the alien face effects are great and unsettling, however much they try to make him a relatable anti-hero – but it is Elle Fanning that gets top billing. Predators with daddy issues – didn’t see that coming.  And a rote Find Your Own Family message was not an angle expected of Trachtenberg to take the franchise either, for both good and bad. One has to commend Trachtenberg trying to stretch the franchise parameters, although one might argue that putting that particular narrative cupcake in this action playpen is ill-fitting: the sister stuff is distracting, often irritating, and drags the enterprise away from its focus. But then again, this film is not a bloodbath expected of the franchise as everyone is a synthetic, proposing even crossover appeal (in the screening I attended, there were preteens). Yet the limitations of the franchise do feel usurped, first by blowing them all on an animated go-for-broke and then expanding and changing the emphasis. That there’s apparently a long-game of interest being carried out is laudable and still fascinating for fans (the females next, it seems).

The Holy Mountain

THE HOLY MOUNTAIN
Writer & Director ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky
1973, Mexico
Stars ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky, Horacio Salinas, Zamira Saunders

A kaleidoscope of symbolism, symmetry, creativity, misogyny, intentional and unintentional humour, dodgy dubbing and random animals. Jodorowsky gets by on intermediate narrative but a wealth of social and spiritual commentary and prescience: rituals, algorithms, false idols, counterculture outrage, consumerism, selling wars to children via games, etc., and – which got the second biggest laugh from the full audience – religiously themed firearms (the biggest laugh was “My chauffeur is not good at sex”). Meanwhile the soundtrack veers between spiritual chants, jazz, throat singing, to glam and electro. So singular is Jodorowsky’s stream-of-consciousness vision and cut-up carnivalesque narrative that it is impossible to predict what is coming next.

 

 

Jodorowsy fled Mexico during filming because of government threats due to his portrayal of soldiers massacring civilians; John Lennon partly financed it. Gregory J. Smalley writes, 

“The Holy Mountain is meant as a Symbolist work, not as unconscious nonsense; but the end user, unable to decipher the film, experiences it as Surrealism.”  

 Certainly, there’s the overall sense that the true meaning of it all is all in Jodorowsy’s head, and we’re just along for the ride. With the story relegated to intermittently decipherable allegory, the audience is left hooked by the brilliance, bemusement and excess of the film-making.  
   
‘The Holy Mountain’ is all at once and in part stunning, baffling, inconsistent, erratic, dazzling, psychedelic, oblique, deeply felt and always beguiling. The quest is an illusion and the point. Film-making as a religious revelation and indulgence, art as the way to immortality, art for art’s sake.

The Curse of Frankenstein

 

The Curse of Frankenstein

Director ~ Terence Fisher

Writers ~ Jimmy Sangster

1957 ~ UK

Stars ~ Peter Cushing, Hazel Court, Robert Urquhart, Christopher Lee

Although Hammer had taken the success of ‘The Quatermass Experiment’ as a hint that they should move into horror as a moneymaker, ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’ set the agenda. Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, updating Universal monsters, Terence Fisher directing and Jimmy Sangster writing, sumptuous set design by Bernard Robinson, Jack Asher’s cinematography, salaciousness and a lash of gore all went to make up Bray Studio’s Hammer Horror brand. Although it sounds like a sequel, ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’ is Hammer’s first Gothic Monster, the first British horror film in colour and Fisher makes sure you know it, whether it’s Cushing blue eyes, the multi-coloured liquids in the lab or a somewhat unnecessary close-up of a luxurious dressing gown. 

Mary Shelly’s novel is the landmark in the creation of the genres of horror and science-fiction, teen fiction and body horror, written when she was nineteen. Famously, it was the result of a writing competition between her, Lord Byron and Percy Shelley in the Summer of 1816. Its themes are of existential angst, societal rejection, ambition and responsibility, ego and empathy, running from parental obligation, victimhood and revenge, male ego, the patriarchy’s fear/disgust/misunderstanding of a woman’s ability to give birth (seeing it as a challenge to usurp), and others. All the earliest adaptations forgo the eloquence of the creature if not the suffering, and in this adaption, Jimmy Sangster takes full-blown liberties with Shelley’s seminal novel as others have. He makes it not about the whimpering, cruel rejection of your creation, but abusing it into sublimation, robbing it of agency, humiliating and tampering with it at your whim. Rather than an odyssey, this is a chamber piece about a narcissistic baron, his laboratory, his disapproving best friend and his unaware fiancé – in that order.

The first pairing of life-long friends Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Cushing is fantastic, able to exude charm even through his selfishness and mercenariness. Cushing’s ability to treat the fantastical and tosh with sincerity cannot be undervalued. The step into confrontational colour gore is nicely declared with Cushing smearing blood on his jacket (and a find symbol for his bloody obsessive nature). Unlike his co-star Paul Krempe, Cushing thoroughly embraced this in Hammer, seeing it as a fairy-tale world. Cinematographer Jack Asher can be greatly credited with the whole look of Hammer, and certainly the precise colour from the startling close-up bright blue of Cushing’s eyes to that jacket bloodstain turning pink over time. But this is not to forget production designer Bernard Robinson, whose laboratory set is surely as iconic as Whale’s 1931 version. 

Lee’s performance is perhaps a revelation, forgoing the charisma and elegance that would later give him such presence for the clumsy, lumbering coordination of the monster. There is a pathetic uncoordinated physicality that he was not called upon to deliver or necessary after the malevolent baritone elegance of his ‘Dracula’. To avoid being prosecuted by Universal, Le’s creature make-up designed by Phil Leakey is a world away from the iconic, brilliant and cartoonish Jack Pierce designed Karloff visage: Leakey’s make-up is true to the report of being taken from a hanged man whose been ravaged by the birds. It is a performance that dominates despite its comparatively brief screentime due to that nasty make-up and Lee’s natural commanding aura.

Otherwise, Krempe gives a solid but uninspired performance as Victor’s mentor, there is a young Melvyn Hayes, a sultry Valerie Gaunt and a charming Hazel Court, exuding warmth and turning what little she has as Victor’s cousin-fiancé into a sympathetic character. It is through her that the era’s repression of female autonomy and patriarchy’s dominance come through.

Hammer’s novelty was to highlight that, make no mistake, Victor Frankenstein is the true villain with the creature the jigsaw manifestation of his ugliness, forced into life. And despite the presumed finality of the ending, it is Cushing’s Frankenstein that made for a franchise. From a reported budget of £65,000 ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’ made a box office of $8 million, a success that led to Hammer’s Gothic Horror agenda and seven Frankenstein sequels. Jack Asher said that Fisher only did two takes due to Hammer’s demanding scheduling. When taken into consideration, this conveys just how punk, professional and talented this team was to produce such performances, elegance and influential horror.

Die My Love

Die My Love

Director ~ Lynne Ramsay

Writers ~ Enda Walsh, Lynne Ramsay, Alice Birch

2025 ~ United Kingdom, Canada, United States

Stars ~ Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, Sissy Spacek

The title, packaging and trailer may mislead into expecting a noirish thriller, but it is not that. One of those films that equates mental illness with rebelliousness and romanticism. This means Jennifer Lawrence is always acting-up, crawling around on all fours like she’s auditioning for sexy ‘Cats’, or poking her tongue out at a mounted deer head and incapable of chewing gum or writing in a journal without it being in the most annoying manner. This is a character who can’t pass a piano alone without pressing a key, whose every social scene in public will be an embarrassment. It doesn’t help that a lot of the context is set at aggravating, to convey depression and assaulted senses, with a dog’s default as Constant Barking or Whining and the song choices leaning towards the twee, although the John Pine needledrop hits the mark.

Sissy Spacek serves as both unhinged by grief and then the sage of feminist empathy, although the inconsistency does fit with her belief that women experience phases of temporary madness. Pattinson must rage against the pretences, but he has no hope: the first images we see of the love of his life is her flopping to herself in an empty room and prowling with a knife on all fours from afar with passionate intent, so she is already coded as acting for herself. We don’t really get a sense of what’s at stake, just that she’s not right: we aren’t informed where we’ve come from and the temporal play doesn’t truly assist us with a starting point.

There is nothing to object to with Ramsay’s direction, dreamy and fragmented, slightly oblique, but it is arguably ill-fitting garb to the subject matter. Surely life experience relegates romanticising suffering to teenage inexperience. Reducing Jennifer Lawrence’s performance to constantly pointing to itself and mental illness to the vision of a forest fire offers no insight or help: we can fathom where this is going. These things are not romantic or poetic.