To find love late in life is a blessing. To find love for The Predator as a franchise nearly 40 years after it launched is just weird and confusing. The fact that my newfound affection relies entirely upon two direct-to-Hulu films, one of them an animated anthology, makes things even more baffling and scary. Who am I now? What invisible hand has guided me on a journey that ends with me eagerly awaiting more Predator content. We get a second movie this year, Predator fans! Do we have a name for our fandom? Pred-heads?
This is all writer/director Dan Trachtenberg’s fault. It started with Prey, a wildly slept-on entry in the series that made it something it had simply never been before: good. Now comes Predator: Killer of Killers. Trachtenberg and codirector Joshua Wassung, along with cowriters Micho Robert Rutare and Jim Thomas, deliver a triptych of wicked carnage.
Starting in 841, the Viking warrior Ursa (Lindsay LaVanchy) does battle with the dreadlocked, split-faced alien murderer. Then in 1609, two sons of a samurai warlord, Kenji and Kiyoshi (both voiced by Louis Ozawa), fight and feud 20 years, only to be interrupted when a Predator shows up. Skip to 1941, and a fighter pilot (Rick Gonzalez) in the middle of WWII gets into a dogfight with a spaceship. The killers of all three Predators get snatched up and placed into suspended animation. The epilogue sees the humans from different eras join together in the future to fight for their freedom against unholy space beasts.
From the surprisingly crisp animation to the frantic and kinetic pace, absolutely everything about Killer of Killers works. It should feel like a crappy video game or some kind of goofy fan fiction. At the very least, it should seem overly serious and annoying self-important. It is somehow none of those things. It is just lean and fun. It deepens the “lore” for us Pred-Heads by laying the groundwork for future stories but not in a “stay tuned after the credits and hope we actually make what we’re promising” Marvel Cinematic Universe way.
He may not have worked solo here, but Trachtenberg officially enters “I will watch all he does” territory with his third near-flawless feature film effort. After 10 Cloverfield Lane and Prey, he scores a hat trick of “weird sequels that shouldn’t work but somehow very much do.” He has Predator: Badlands looming this fall. I cannot believe that I am legitimately excited to see the ninth film in the Predator series.
One time, someone told me a story about a person who said that Predator was a “more cerebral film” than Alien. It is not. It is dumb. The series is dumb. Trachtenberg knows that and has figured out a way to transform dumb into dumb-awesome. It’s like a Pokémon evolution or the opposite of what the country is doing. Predator: Killer of Killers is the best animated movie that I have seen in the last several years and among the most fun I’ve had watching any movie in 2025. Join me. There is room on the Pred-Head bandwagon. It is more cerebral over here.
Grade = A-
Other Critical Voices to Consider
Emmanuel “E-Man” Noisette at The Movie Blog says “The ninja versus Predator sequence is a masterclass in tension and style. It is everything fans have been dreaming of since Prey. The choreography is tight, the kills are savage, and the world-building is layered in smart and subtle ways.”
Lisa Laman at Culturess says “Most intriguingly, Trachtenberg’s gift for realizing maximalsit grisly carnage co-exists with a welcome recurring narrative fascination with human beings emphasizing unity and co-operation, not endless vengeance. Who could’ve imagined something this thematically audacious and constantly fun emerging from the Predator saga after 2018’s The Predator?”
Liz Shannon Miller at Consequence says “As with Prey, the secret sauce here is an almost Looney Tunes-esque approach: Buckets of red and green blood are spilled both due to the human stories as well as the Predator’s hunting, in inventive ways that prove thrilling right from the jump.”
The post Who Kills the Killers’ Killer? appeared first on The Reader.
