Prey

Prey is not bad because it lacked good ideas. It is bad because it squandered the good ideas it did have.

The lead characters in Prey are a lesbian couple and a feral alien. Jo and Jessica live in seclusion in a cabin in the rural UK. Their preexisting relationship issues are brought to the forefront by the presence of a mysterious stranger named Anders. Anders is an alien with unclear motives disguised as a human he killed . Anders’ odd behaviour causes Jo and Jessica to assume he is mentally ill rather than a literal alien. Jessica wants Andres to stay with them, feeling sympathy for the injured and confused man. Jo disagrees. She’s a misandrist and generally doesn’t like Anders. For much of the movie, the only devious thing Anders does is eat exclusive small animals. But, in the last handful of minutes of the movie Anders does end up terrorizing and killing Jo and Jessica.

There are good bones to Prey. In essence, the film is a tense relationship drama between Jo and Jessica that they’ve dropped an alien on top of that. This isn’t a film where the two alien victims lack personality or backstory. On the contrary, the film dedicates too much time to Jo and Jessica’s relationship. Anders spends most of the film observing silently. He just chills in a corner while Jo acts possessive and mentally unsound and Jessica acts afraid of her. The concept isn’t bad in and of itself. But the horror elements of this horror movie take a backseat to relationship drama which isn’t even well done.

Obviously, I expected a horror movie movie from 1977 with lesbian leads to be homophobic. I didn’t expect the unique flavour of Prey‘s homophobia. I thought it was just going to be an alien brutalizing a lesbian couple. That’s very little of the film. The main homophobic aspect of the film is Jo and how she treats Jessica. Jo is controlling, emotionally and sometimes physically abusive towards Jessica. Her faults are absolutely tied to her sexuality. Jo doesn’t have a lot of character traits beyond being queer, a misandrist and generally unpleasant. As such, all of her actions feel tied to her strongest trait which is her misandrist lesbianism. Also, I’m tired of the abusive or problematic member of a lesbian couple always being the short haired one. It’s almost like an accident self-own to heterosexuality/masculinity that the problematic partner is the more traditionally masculine one.

Ignoring the fact that the film dislikes one of its lead characters and everything she represents, the main problem with Prey is that it’s slow. There are not very many moments of horror in this horror movie. Anders is an unremarkable villain because his main reaction to anything is to not react. If they were going to go this route, the film needed to be more atmospheric. It could have had a mounting sense of dread even while nothing overtly horrific happened. But the film isn’t competent enough to do this. Instead, it’s just over an hour of character development filler and less than ten minutes of any alien-based scares.

The best part of Prey is its very last scene which is admittedly harrowing. It’s a bleak, downer ending that I really enjoyed. I just wish anything before this literal last two minutes of the film had been interesting. Prey is a failed relationship drama masquerading as a horror movie. It actively dislikes one of its leads and doesn’t have any deep understanding of any of its three leads. So while the film focuses on character, it’s not interesting. Most of the film feels like filler with an anti-gay and for some reason, anti-vegetarian agenda. It’s a shame because there are interesting ideas in Prey but the execution really lets those ideas go to waste.

Overall rating: 4/10

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