Based on the first ten minutes of Prey, this film actually surprised me by not being as big a pile of big cat scat as I thought it was going to be. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves… that final rating is low for a reason. It’s still a pretty bad film… just not THAT bad.
It stars Ryan Phillippe, Emile Hirsh, and Mena Suvari as three down-on-their-luck actors who – wait – <checks notes> – as various characters in Africa who wind up stranded in the middle of a big game preserver. Low on survival instincts, they have to find help before being eaten by stock footage <checks notes> I mean by lions.
The acting in this film is b.a.d. I didn’t immediately recognize Mena Suvari and based on her acting, I’m not surprised I haven’t seen in her in a decade. Ryan Phillippe is in the same boat… and Emile Hirsch seems to be trying… trying to play a bad boy bush pilot from a better movie he saw once. There are other actors too but I’m not familiar with them.
The flick has some impressively bad CGI… but limited. They never try to (poorly) CGI a lion which means they appear about as often as the shark in Jaws. On the one hand, they shouldn’t have bothered making this movie if they didn’t have the budget or skill to do it right… but, on the other hand, at least they knew their limitations. And yet when one of the leads gets et by a lion off screen… yeah… looks like they just saved money on principal photography.
The total lack of survival skills was a source of awe and wonder. One of the leads is wounded and they don’t even try to make a stretcher. Instead, they try the tactic of doing absolute nothing until a lion comes along and eats them. But hey, maybe it’s 3d Chess… if they get eaten, they’ll eventually get pooped out and rolled to safety by a dung beetle. Excellent planning!
The flick does – eventually – find its way to some thrilling moments that actually worked… at least as far as editing and score go. The characters and the writing remain laughable. And I think there’s a subtle aroma of faith-based filmmaking in a pretty hilarious finale.
This is a bad movie but I was kind of entertained by its ineptitude. I wasn’t BORED which is ultimately the key to a slight nudge in the score. The film probably deserves a lower rating but I was mildly amused.
score: 62