Prey! (2024)

"Christian Film-makers Throw Themselves to the Lions"

Mukunda Michael Dewil's new 'When Animals Attack!' picture gets a digital & DVD release from Signature Entertainment.

Africa: the Kalahari desert. Christian missionary couple Andrew (Ryan Phillipe) and Sue (Mena Suvari) are forced to leave the village in which they are based (or rather the solitary tent that is all we see if it) because of the imminent arrival of militant extremists.

The only plane out is a rickety crate piloted by the extremely dubious Grun (Emile Hirsch) who agrees to take them to safety along with three other passengers. No sooner is the plane in the air than a poorly CGI-rendered version of it is hurtling to the ground with such speed it should be dashed to bits. Instead the film cuts straight to the budget-saving aftermath to show that several bits have survived reasonably intact, which is more than can be said for Sue who has a bad leg and can't move.

Grun reveals that they have crashed in a game reserve filled with lions, leopards and hyenas. If that's true then luckily for them they've landed on the one vast plane of it that's completely devoid of any wildlife at all. This absence of wildlife persists for most of the film.

Oh yes. For a movie that claims to be about the threat of savage, carnivorous wildlife, PREY! is Trades Descriptions Act terrible. The few animals we see are in footage obviously shot somewhere else. At one point a freeze-frame lion's face attacks what's left of the plane and it's not until the very end that there's any significant human-animal interaction at all. Mena Suvari's character disappears halfway through, only for Andrew to reveal that lions have dragged her body away. We see none of it, meaning the only item of interest so far is to wonder whether Suvari's agent only allowed her to be in half of this, and only act from the chest up for most of that. There's the hint of a Christian message towards the end allowing the viewer to ponder the question: If God exists, would he allow his propaganda to turn out this ropey?

It's actually no fun being this hard on a film but PREY! is dreadful, and not in an entertaining 'Bad Film' kind of way. One can only imagine what the three main stars were thinking agreeing to be in this. Crushingly poor. Here's the trailer: 

PREY! is out on Digital and DVD from Signature Entertainment on Monday 29th April 2024