While many people have tried to project meaning onto Steven Spielberg’s Jaws — some have called it a parable about the Vietnam War, others have described it as a post-Watergate examination of the American middle-class — the movie is perhaps best enjoyed as a piece of pulp, devoid of any subtext at all. It is, after all, about a people-eating shark. Some things should remain uncomplicated. Nothing, for instance, would suck the joy out of a Predator movie more than trying to extract a deeper meaning from it. The franchise’s surprise new instalment, the animated offshoot Predator: Killer of Killers, embraces the simplicity at its core. And although it’s written by two grown men, it has the giddy energy of something concocted by teenage boys.
Killer of Killers is directed by Dan Trachtenberg, who brought a freshness to both the Cloverfield and Predator franchises with his no-nonsense approach to lore that would’ve typically invited a denser exploration. His idea for a sequel to the memorable monster movie Cloverfield wasn’t a globe-trotting, VFX-heavy action extravaganza; 10 Cloverfield Lane was a chamber piece featuring only three characters, locked in a basement while an alien invasion unfolds above ground. His take on the Predator franchise, Prey, wasn’t an intergalactic adventure set on an alien planet; it was a near-silent period piece featuring a Native American protagonist.
A still from Predator: Killer of Killers.
Killer of Killers continues down this inventive path. Divided essentially into three broad chapters with an extended epilogue, the movie is a lean, 80-minute-long thrill-ride with visuals so immaculate that you might just double your viewing time pausing an admiring the frames. The first chapter is set in the era of Vikings. A warrior seeks vengeance against the man who killed her father, while also protecting her precious son from the horrors of her vicious world. Their quest is brought to a halt when they come face-to-face with a Predator.
Killer of Killers supports the indisputable theory that any movie under the sun could be made 20% better if you were to just add a Predator to it. Imagine how much more enjoyable Hera Pheri would be if Paresh Rawal had to save his butt from a murderous alien; imagine if Sunny Deol was made to throw down with an eight-foot Predator at the end of Ghayal instead of Amrish Puri? Killer of Killers allows these invasive thoughts to win as it chucks a Predator into three different plots, set in three different time periods. As it turns out, the Predators are trying to identify the fiercest human killers from across history, and they land on the Viking warrior, a Ninja, and a World War II fighter pilot. What they do with them is best left unrevealed.
But each of the three chapters is written with a simplicity that is altogether missing from modern franchise filmmaking. The shorts work as self-contained stories; the mother-and-son narrative feels both intimate and epic, as does the Japan-set chapter, which follows a couple of estranged ‘brothers’ whose reconciliation is interrupted by the arrival of an alien. While the first two chapters are largely silent — think of them as episodes of The Mandalorian, as if they were directed by Robert Eggers and Takashi Miike — the third chapter is a fun-filled tribute to Hollywood blockbuster cinema.
Tonally different as these shorts are, they’re all uniformly breathtaking to look at. The style of animation is similar to what you might have admired in movies such as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. There’s no doubt that these techniques are cheaper than whatever it is that Pixar does, but they also allows filmmakers to be more visually creative. Because they aren’t chasing a certain realism in physics, they can make more exciting choices. Every facial expression needn’t be intricate; more can be communicated through old-fashioned silent cinema techniques than state-of-the-art technical wizardry.
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A still from Predator: Killer of Killers.
And Trachtenberg has proven himself to be especially talented at visual storytelling. Killer of Killers balances its beauty with an intense appetite for violence. Bodies are axed in half, heads are severed, monsters are slain with giddy enthusiasm. The movie only raises the stakes for his Prey follow-up lined up for release later this year. Unlike that pandemic-era gem, which they did dirty by dropping directly on streaming, Trachtenberg’s Predator: Badlands will get a theatrical release. Killer of Killers, on the other hand, is the kind of movie that puts streaming to proper use, as a platform for risky storytelling that doesn’t lean on big budgets to make up for shoddy craft.
Predator: Killer of Killers
Director – Dan Trachtenberg
Cast – Lindsay LaVanchy, Louis Ozawa, Rick Gonzalez
Rating – 4/5
