‘Predator: Killer of Killers' Review: Hulu's Awesomely Violent Animated Death Match Highlights the Full Potential of the Franchise
An awesomely violent and artfully staged piece of animated pulp, 'Predator: Killer of Killers' feels like a movie that was dreamed up by a couple of stoned teenage boys in a suburban basement one night during the summer of 1987, but this is the rare case where that feels like a good thing. A very good thing, even.
Close your eyes and you can practically hear Dan Trachtenberg — whose impressive 'Prey' made him the de facto thought leader of the 'Predator' franchise — passing a miserable blunt to screenwriter and co-director Micho Robert Rutare as one of them asks 'Who would win in a fight: a Predator or a ninja? What about a Predator or a Viking?' These are some of the great questions of our time, and 'Killer of Killers' answers them with enough style and savagery to share a sweet little contact high with everyone who streams it.
More from IndieWire
Does 'Materialists' Satisfy as a Romance? Screen Talk Debates Celine Song's Film, Shares 'F1' First Reactions
'I Don't Understand You' Review: Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells Kill It in Grisly Destination Rom-Com
The project's charm lies in the fact that it doesn't try to do anything else. An anthology-like collection of death matches in which cinema's most toxically militaristic alien species hunts the greatest human warriors across our planet's history, 'Killer of Killers' is so mission-driven and self-possessed that it never feels the least bit like an elaborate teaser for Trachtenberg's forthcoming 'Badlands' (a theatrical release that will determine the continued viability of the 'Predator' franchise), even if it does a phenomenal job of convincing people to give a shit about the 'Yautja' again — or for the first time.
All red meat and no gristle, 'Killer of Killers' leapfrogs through the centuries — with occasional flash-forwards into sci-fi territory — as if it were using the 'Assassin's Creed' games like a treasure map. The action starts on the shores of Valhalla circa 841 A.D., where a vengeance-obsessed valkyrie named Ursa (voiced by Lindsay LaVanchy) leads her son Anders on a raid to kill the barbarian king who ransacked her village when she was a child. 'Why do we fight?,' she asks the boy. 'Because our enemy still lives,' he replies.
Locked into the siege like Timothée Chalamet at a Knicks playoff game in Indiana, the invisibility-cloaked Predator who's watching from the sidelines may have traveled hundreds of light years for a front-row seat to the carnage, but that sort of zero-sum ethos surely reminds him of home. The alien's plan is the same across the first three of the movie's four segments: Let the humans slaughter each other, and then ambush the last — and presumably strongest — warrior standing as a test of its own skill as a hunter. One second Ursa is standing triumphant over the corpse of her enemy, and the next her minions are screaming 'Grendel!' as the Predator starts ripping their spinal cords out of their backs and/or pulverizing their bodies into red mush.
While those combat tests have a tendency to be wildly unfair (I'm not sure what a Predator would prove to itself by using a space-age shockwave gun to obliterate a guy holding a wooden spear, but maybe a red-blooded American man who shoots forest animals for sport could explain it to me), the Yautja also have a tendency of failing them in spectacular fashion, as it quickly becomes clear that people are still the most dangerous game. Contextualized as a duel between two different breeds of 'monster' (one being Ursa's bloodlust, and the other a demon from outer space), the battle that comprises much of the opening chapter is nothing less than nerd-ass shit par excellence.
As in subsequent episodes, the movie's 'violence is unevolved' moral framing doesn't stop Rutare and Trachtenberg from choreographing the Viking vs. E.T. fight with fetishistic grace, particularly because the CG animation — stilted in its faux-rotoscoped movement, but soaked with the detail and lush ferity of a classic graphic novel — allows them to stage action that would be impossible to sell (or afford) in live-action. Moving away from green screen, the Volume, and other sources of sludgy-looking FX also gives the filmmakers license to make fantastic use of their characters' environments.
A good time for its gore alone, the Ursa brawl is made all the more satisfying because of how cleverly she weaponizes Viking ships against against the Predator, in much the same way as the Japan-set episode that comes next takes full advantage of Tokugawa period architecture as a shinobi hops around a 17th century fortress with a Yautja on his tail (no spoilers, but let's just say the Predators are ill-prepared to fight on the Kawara tiles that lined every 17th castle from Edo on out).
If 'The Sword' maxes out all of the cultural tenets you'd expect an American cartoon like this to exploit, Rutare and Trachtenberg solve the triteness of its story — two brothers, raised by their father as bitter rivals, fight to the death in order to prove their supremacy — by embracing its basicness. Almost entirely wordless from start to finish, the segment pares the sibling rivalry down to its purest level so that it can distill what its characters might be capable of achieving together if they ever fought as one… a theme that 'Killer of Killers' will return to with a vengeance in its out-of-this-world fourth segment.
But in order to reach those heights, the movie first has to take to the skies, which it does in a 1942-set chapter about a wide-eyed Navy mechanic (voiced by Rick Gonzalez) who steals a rickety old plane and flies into battle against the Nazi fleet after he becomes convinced that something else has been hiding in the clouds and shooting down all his friends. This episode is slow to take off, as it starts by doubling down on the film's recurring fixation with children proving themselves to their parents (a relevant motif in a franchise preoccupied with self-worth, but one that 'Killer of Killers' can only glance at between grudge matches), and its chatty protagonist grows tiresome in a hurry.
But once he's airborne, Rutare and Trachtenberg delight in orchestrating some ultra-graphic aerial mayhem, as our hero tries to outfox a heat-seeking alien jet from the cockpit of a busted tin can. Tom Cruise might have a slight edge when it comes to realism, but Rutare and Trachtenberg giddily compensate for that with stratospheric nose-dives and hailstorms full of disembodied limbs. The gore never quite reaches 'Ninja Scroll' levels or anything like that, but 'Killer of Killers' is able to maintain a rock-hard R without ever lowering itself to the level of empty titillation.
By that point in the movie, there's little mystery left as to what Rutare and Trachtenberg are building toward for a grand finale: A melee that will somehow blend Ursa's ambivalent revenge with the ninja's regretful lonerism and the flyboy's inextinguishable resourcefulness. This final segment is a bit sillier and more cartoonish than the ones before it, as 'Killer of Killers' is suddenly forced to juggle a variety of (very) different personalities on a hostile alien world whose rules and physics are as rooted in fiction as the film's previous settings were rooted in fact, but there's a satisfying concision to how the script pulls all of its various stories together, and — for a project that could have felt like nothing but fan service — I appreciated that Rutare and Trachtenberg save their movie's only explicit allusion to the rest of the 'Predator' franchise until the end credits.
Running a very tight 80 minutes or so between titles, 'Killer of Killers' doesn't pretend to be a blockbuster-sized entry in a series that has always struggled to find the right scale for itself, but it even more adamantly refuses to be the sort of throwaway junk that we've been conditioned to expect from straight-to-streaming spinoffs, remakes, sequels, and the like. Fantastic as this film would be to see on the big screen, I'd go so far as to say that this is what streaming should be for: Immaculately crafted bonus treats that stand on their own two feet and demand to be watched with both eyes at the same time as they serve to reinforce the primacy of the theatrical releases that prop them up. In a bottomless content abyss where only the strongest material survives, 'Killer of Killers' should have no trouble slaying the rest of its competition on your Hulu home page.
'Predator: Killer of Killers' will be available to stream on Hulu starting Friday, June 6.
Want to stay up to date on IndieWire's film and critical thoughts? to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings — all only available to subscribers.
Best of IndieWire
The 25 Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies, Ranked
Every IndieWire TV Review from 2020, Ranked by Grade from Best to Worst
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
20 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Comedian Isabel Hagen Revisits Her Roots Playing the Viola in ‘On a String' First Look
Comedian Isabel Hagen is blurring fact and fiction with her music-centric directorial debut 'On a String.' The indie, which debuts at Tribeca, fits perfectly within the 2025 program for the acclaimed festival, which has additional highlights such as 'Billy Joel: And So It Goes,' Miley Cyrus' 'Something Beautiful,' and music therapist drama 'Charliebird.' Hagen writes, directs, and stars in 'On a String' which centers on a Juilliard-trained violist looking for her big break. In real life, Hagen somehow also finds time between appearing on 'The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon' and performing at the Just for Laughs festival to tour with buzzy bands, most recently Vampire Weekend. More from IndieWire 'Lilo & Stitch': How Director Dean Fleischer Camp Followed the Chris Sanders Animation Manual in Adapting His Misfit Alien 'Titan: The OceanGate Disaster' Review: A Surface-Level Netflix Documentary About the Submersible Implosion Heard Around the World The official synopsis for 'On a String' reads: 'Isabel (Hagen) is a young, Juilliard-trained violist still living at home with her parents in the heart of New York City. She's trying to make a living playing gigs with her friends but when her toxic ex- boyfriend reappears, who also happens to be the Philharmonic's 'newest, hottest cellist,' he informs her of a viola opening in the prestigious orchestra. Nothing can go wrong, right?' Dylan Baker, Ling Ling Huang, Frederick Weller, Jamie Lee, and Eric Bogosian co-star. 'As a Juilliard graduate, I freelanced as a violist in New York City for over a decade,' Hagen told IndieWire. 'I played weddings, private parties, backup strings for singer-songwriters, among other engagements. I've been a tiny part of other peoples' big life moments, finding paradoxical intimacy in being an observer. It's this role of the observer that initially inspired me to write 'On a String,' which is not about someone driven by a desire for success, but rather by a need for true connection to the world around her, with no idea how to find it.' In an additional director's statement, Hagen cited her love for the viola 'faded' during her time at Juilliard. 'Still, music was all I knew, and I freelanced as a violist in New York City for over a decade (I did eventually become a stand-up comedian, but that's another movie),' she said. 'While this film tells a tale of a classical musician navigating a specific world, with which many may be unfamiliar, I was interested in using that specificity to capture an experience I find to be universal — that of confronting the reality of following your dreams and accepting life's inevitable limitations. Authenticity was a priority for me in telling this story. The film features live-captured musical performances, and the musician characters are almost entirely played by trained musicians, including my real-life brother, pianist Oliver Hagen, portraying my character's brother in the film.' 'On a String' is produced by Hagen, Olivia Vessel, Torrance Shepherd, Alex Vara, and Annie McGrath. 'On a String' premieres at the Tribeca Festival as a sales title with Andrew Herwitz at the Film Sales Company handling rights. Check out the first look clip below. Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie Nicolas Winding Refn's Favorite Films: 37 Movies the Director Wants You to See
Yahoo
20 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi on ‘Beatles '64,' the Fab Four's Influence on Cinema, and David Lynch at Their First U.S. Concert
The Beatles are one of the 20th century's most exhaustively documented bands, from television series like 'The Beatles Anthology' and feature films like Richard Lester's 'A Hard Day's Night' to documentaries by Albert and David Maysles, Ron Howard, and Peter Jackson, among others. One would think there was little left to explore, but the miracle of the Disney+ documentary 'Beatles '64' is that it manages to feel completely fresh and new — largely by giving the viewer the visceral experience of what it was like to experience The Beatles' first visit to America via the recollections of people who were there. One person who vividly remembers what it was like to first hear The Beatles' music is Martin Scorsese, who produced 'Beatles '64' in the hope that it would convey the exuberance that the band's first visit to America inspired. 'You have to understand, it was the end of the origins of rock and roll,' Scorsese told IndieWire. 'You had Motown, you had Phil Spector and the Wall of Sound — which influenced me a great deal in 'Mean Streets' and other films — you had the girl groups and Smokey Robinson and there was still a lot going on, but [rock and roll] needed something fresh. And America needed something fresh too.' More from IndieWire 'In Your Dreams' Teaser: The Search for the Sandman Powers Netflix's New Animated Sibling Fantasy Gold List TV Honors 'Squid Game,' 'Deli Boys,' 'The Studio,' and More That's because the country was, when The Beatles arrived on American shores in February 1964, still reeling from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a tragedy that 'Beatles '64' uses as a structuring device in order to give the band's visit context. 'The devastation was unlike anything anyone had experienced in our generation,' Scorsese said. 'The country was ready for something new.' Yet as Scorsese points out, and the documentary demonstrates, The Beatles were initially met with skepticism. 'They were touted as kind of an oddity because they had hair that was long, and the press couldn't wait to attack them,' Scorsese said. 'We didn't take them that seriously. There was an attitude we all had of, 'Yeah, show us.'' Scorsese followed the press coverage of The Beatles' arrival and assumed they were just a 'nonsense novelty' act — until he heard 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand' on the radio for the first time while getting ready to go to class at NYU film school. 'I heard the first few beats, and I just stood there. I was late for class,' Scorsese said. 'I listened and I admitted to myself, 'That's really good,' and as soon as I got to NYU I was telling everybody, 'This is not some ripoff — this is for real.' There was something joyous about it, and I don't think we can ever really describe the uplifting effect of not only their musical ability, but the writing and the lyrics. An extraordinary change occurred in the youth of the country after the disaster of the assassination.' Scorsese, frequent producing partner Margaret Bodde, and director David Tedeschi had access to extraordinary archival footage shot by Albert and David Maysles that enabled them to give the audience a sense of the immediate impact The Beatles had. Most of the Maysles' footage has barely been seen since it was shot, partly due to clearance issues and partly because United Artists didn't want the material in general release where it could dilute the appeal of 'A Hard Day's Night.' Thanks to restoration work by Peter Jackson's Park Road Post Production, most of the footage looks and sounds like it was shot yesterday. For Tedeschi, the key to utilizing the Maysles' footage was taking advantage of their talent as interviewers. As great as all the backstage and concert footage of the band itself is, what really conveys the magic of the moment is Tedeschi's use of interviews the Maysles did with the group's fans. 'I was lucky enough to work with Al Maysles on [Scorsese's Rolling Stones concert film] 'Shine a Light,'' Tedeschi told IndieWire. 'Marty hired him to shoot behind-the-scenes stuff. You'd see him disarm whoever he was with.' Tedeschi feels that the Maysles' talent for making interviewees feel at ease is what really makes the footage 'Beatles '64' had to work with special. 'It's not surprising to me that they were able to capture The Beatles,' Tedeschi said. 'What's surprising to me is how a 15-year-old girl on the street who has had no media training is somehow calm and able to project themselves and has great charisma.' Scorsese was able to witness the Maysles at work back in the 1960s when he was at NYU and looking for a job. 'They were making a changeover from black and white to color, and they always used available light,' Scorsese said. 'But you couldn't do that with color at the time, so my job was to hold the lamp. Now, the problem is that they're directing without telling you anything, so you have to anticipate where Al's going with the camera to give him a little bit of light. In a sense, it was an extraordinary master class in visual interpretation, in creating narrative when nothing is staged.' 'Beatles '64' contains not only the Maysles material and other archival footage, but new interviews conducted by Bodde, Scorsese, and Tedeschi with subjects from the two surviving Beatles (Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr) to fans who saw their first concerts — including director David Lynch in one of his final filmed interviews before he passed away earlier this year. The filmmakers were stunned to learn that, as a young art student, David Lynch attended The Beatles' first ever American concert at the Washington Coliseum — and that he had another connection to the narrative they were telling. 'One thing he said that didn't make the film was pretty fascinating,' Tedeschi said. 'As a Boy Scout, he had been an usher at Kennedy's inauguration. When it came down to it, it was extraordinary how many people were at the New York Carnegie Hall show, at the Washington Coliseum, and in Miami — many people who went on to do great things.' Interviewing McCartney and Starr was a challenge for Scorsese and Tedeschi, who didn't want to repeat old stories — no easy feat with celebrities as extensively interviewed as The Beatles. Luckily, Tedeschi was able to talk with McCartney as the rock and roller was curating a photographic exhibit dedicated to The Beatles in 1964. 'The photographs jogged his memory and created a way to have a conversation more than just an interview,' Tedeschi said. In the case of Starr, the filmmakers got him to open up by going through all of the old clothes he kept from the time. Another way that 'Beatles '64' makes enthusiasm for The Beatles infectious is through the way in which Starr himself seems not to have aged — as he goes through his old clothes and displays his old drum set, he demonstrates a youthful energy not dissimilar from the much younger man we see in the archival footage. In the brief moments Scorsese shares with Starr on camera, he seems to get younger, too — as though he's getting back in touch with that NYU film student who first fell in love with the band. 'It's almost as if you can't quite believe this amount of time has passed,' Scorsese said of his experience interviewing Starr. 'I would have been a different interviewer 30, 40 years ago. But following them and other great artists, from the Stones to Dylan to The Band to Van Morrison, you go along for this whole period of people taking these long artistic journeys, and you change. And somehow you tap into that original excitement about the joy of music, and what that music means as an observation of the life we're leading or trying to lead.' Scorsese and Tedeschi, who have worked together in various capacities for around 20 years now, are still not only passionate about music but energized by the challenge of finding a cinematic language with which to express their feelings. 'The problem is how to say it, in other words, the visual narrative,' Scorsese said, noting that he and Tedeschi are struggling with that very problem right now on their upcoming Robbie Robertson documentary. 'We shot the memorial concert, and Dave is now assembling it,' Scorsese said. 'We're smack in the middle of figuring out what this is. We know it's a concert, but there's got to be something that takes us on a trip, or gives us an experience where we can appreciate more where the music came from and how it affects people today.' According to Tedeschi, the challenge is finding a way to get the feelings he witnessed in the artists at the tribute concert onto the screen in a way that's clear. 'We shot the tribute concert along with the rehearsals, and there were tremendous artists,' Tedeschi said. 'Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Allison Russell…and it's very interesting to see The Band's music and Robbie's music played by different artists, all of whom have been really touched by The Band and affected by it. We're working to take that excitement and the musicality and beauty of that and turn it into something more like a movie.' 'Beatles '64' is currently streaming on Disney+. Best of IndieWire The Best Thrillers Streaming on Netflix in June, from 'Vertigo' and 'Rear Window' to 'Emily the Criminal' All 12 Wes Anderson Movies, Ranked, from 'Bottle Rocket' to 'The Phoenician Scheme' Nightmare Film Shoots: The 38 Most Grueling Films Ever Made, from 'Deliverance' to 'The Wages of Fear'
Yahoo
20 minutes ago
- Yahoo
‘Charliebird' First Look: A Children's Hospital Music Therapist Struggles to Find Hope Through Song in Tribeca Premiere
There is a certain ballad that carries over when dealing with a shared trauma: It's a resonance that only those who are attuned to woe can understand. In the highly-anticipated film 'Charliebird,' that song is amplified to a volume that no doubt will be heard by audiences everywhere. 'Charliebird' stars Samantha Smart (who also wrote the script) as a music therapist at a children's hospital. During her shift, she is assigned to work with one patient whose story triggers her own past. The film will have its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in the narrative competition section. This Libby Ewing's directorial feature debut. More from IndieWire Akira Kurosawa Event at Film Forum to Debut 4K Restorations of 'High and Low,' 'Stray Dog,' and More 'It's Dorothy!' Review: The 'Wizard of Oz' Heroine's Cultural Impact Is Closely Considered in This Energetic Doc The official synopsis reads: 'Working as a music therapist at a children's hospital in Texas, Alyse aka Al (Smart) is deeply devoted to her patients and has a rebellious spirit. She's masking her struggle to face a violent, past trauma. Her world is challenged when Charlie, a resistant 17-year-old patient, is assigned to her. Unlike her other kids, Charlie has no interest in working with Al. She doesn't trust her at first, but there is something about Charlie that reminds Al of her past and she is drawn to her, determined to break through. Their sisterly bond grows with an unexpected force. As professional lines blur, Al moves through her past, as Charlie confronts her unknown future.' Gabriela Ochoa Perez, Jeffrey Grover, Gabe Fazio, and Maria Peyramaure co-star. 'Charliebird' is produced by Ewing, Smart, and Elliot Gipson. The film was developed in Ewing's female writers collective, which she started in 2020. 'Once the characters became clear to me, they kind of steered the script- as woo as that sounds. In that way, I don't feel like I wrote it: I feel like I listened and typed,' Smart said. After then after director Ewing's own father suddenly passed away in 2023, she knew that it would be cathartic and healing for them both to bring the story of 'Charliebird' to the screen. 'It was a life altering experience,' Ewing told IndieWire of making the film. 'Sam and I had been working on 'Charliebird' for a while at that point and the only thing that made sense to me [after losing my dad] was to make this film. Funding was a long, oftentimes discouraging journey and ultimately we were able to fund our film because of individuals who were touched by this story. Our beloved community, including League City, San Leon, Dickinson High School, and The Houston Film Commission, were tremendous resources for us. We kept production as small as we could without losing the integrity of the story. If there were financial limitations, that's where the creative problem solving pushed me and the team into making bold and meaningful, story driven choices. Sam and I were relentless in our mission and I'm convinced making a movie is a miracle.' Ewing added that it was 'serendipitous' to be at Tribeca 2025, especially during a year where the festival program has a strong music theme with debuts of Billy Joel's 'And So It Goes' documentary and Miley Cyrus' own directorial debut, 'Something Beautiful.' 'We all know that music is transcendent and transformative; it has the power to heal,' Ewing said. 'My hope is that 'Charliebird' highlights how vital the work of music therapists and creative arts therapists are as part of the healing journey. These individuals are dedicating themselves to not only providing an outlet for patients, but in many cases, assisting patients and their families during the process of end-of-life care. These programs are often the first to lose funding and I hope to rally our audiences' support around the value this provides for our failing healthcare system.' Ewing and Smart are set to reunite on another music-centric film, titled 'September.' The feature is a love story set in Paris. 'Charliebird' premieres at Tribeca as a sales title from Circus Road Films. Check out the first look clip below. Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie Nicolas Winding Refn's Favorite Films: 37 Movies the Director Wants You to See
