Dan Trachtenberg loves the damn Predator so much and in Killer of Killers, he tries to make every single movie in the franchise at once. The majority of this animated pseudo anthology stitches together what I assume were 3 nixed concepts for Prey sequels. The film adaptation of that long conversation with your friends where you all try to fix your favorite franchise. 

Each story only gets around 20 minutes, so plot and
character are as sparse as can be, but the action concepts deliver. The Viking and samurai shorts feature the gory, up close and personal brawls you’d expect. All of the genre conventions you crave with a Predator thrown in. The real standout is the third WW2 set dogfight sequence, which finds a beautiful nirvana between Predator and Top Gun. Remarkably good considering how much of a dweeb the main character is. He speaks like a video game protagonist who has to walk the player through each step of fighting the predator. Made me miss the quieter charms of the two previous leads…but the film was one step ahead of me. 

Without giving too much away, the final act fuses these three characters for a final confrontation with the predators that is an absolute blast. I wish the movie devoted more time to it, because suddenly it’s a cohesive film. On that note, it ends on a blatant cliffhanger, and I really need them to get cooking on that sequel. 

The animation works, but it’s no wonder that this didn’t make it to theaters. It captures the carnage well, but our characters’ expressions are stiff as a board. I also think there was more room to play with the individual aesthetic of the three shorts, give us something a bit more expressionistic. As is, it feels like that awesome CGI trailer for an Xbox game that fell short in the gameplay became self aware and extended itself to feature length. 

The ideal late night stream. Keep ‘em coming, Dan. Looking forward to seeing if the best idea won with Badlands this November.