Married Christian missionary workers Andrew (Ryan Phillippe) and Sue (Mena Suvari) are forced to leave their station in the Kalahari Desert after their lives are threatened by a militant group. Hitching a ride with Grun (Emile Hirsch), a shady smuggler with his own agenda, their departure doesn’t go to plan when the plane crashes in the desert. With Sue gravely injured, Andrew decides to stay by her side while Grun leads the other survivors to find a rescue team.
From the look of the artwork of ‘Prey!’, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’re in for an adrenaline-rush along the lines of the Idris Elba guilty pleasure ‘Beast’. Unfortunately, the lion that’s pictured on the cover doesn’t make an appearance until much later in the film meaning that you have around an hour of meandering plot to wade through first. ‘Prey!’ starts promising enough as the set-up builds and the urgency for Andrew and Sue to leave Africa ramps up. Once the inevitable plane crash happens, the film slips into a lull that it doesn’t recover from. Characters argue, many conversations are had but not much actually happens.
With a cast that includes Ryan Phillippe, Emile Hirsch and Mena Suvari, you’d rightly be expecting a decent watch. All three are capable actors but this low budget thriller does them all a disservice. Delivering stilted and cringe-worthy dialogue – at one point Grun drops Andrew down the side of some rocks, causing him to have a brutal fall and with a straight face he leans over the edge and asks if he’s OK – the actors all deserve better than this weak take on a survival thriller.
To their credit, the central three actors do their best. Phillippe tries to find some nuance in his two-dimensional character while Hirsch at least has some fun as the villain of the film. Suvari is woefully under-used and only gets a handful of lines. The supporting cast is adequate but you’ll likely remember nothing about them once the credits roll.
‘Prey!” isn’t a very good film sadly. The premise is solid enough, if not particularly original, and the cast is capable but they are let down by an underwritten story, some shocking special effects and a third act climax that’s right up there with some of cinema’s greatest WTF moments. I’d hoped this would at least but a popcorn thriller akin to a late night TV movie but alas, it was just incredibly dull.
Cast: Ryan Phillippe, Emile Hirsch, Mena Suvari, Jeremy Tardy, Dylan Flashner Director: Mukunda Michael Dewil Writer: Mukunda Michael Dewil Certificate: 15 Duration: 91 mins Released by: Signature Entertainment Release date: 29th April 2024 Buy ‘Prey!’ now
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