Prey (2021) Netflix Movie Review
This is why I don't go hiking. Well, mainly it's because I'm fairly allergic to walking great distances up hills, but being chased by some unknown assailant through the forest is a close second. I'm talking about Prey, the Netflix German thriller.
On his bachelor party weekend, a man, his brother, and their friends go on a hiking trip into the wild. When the group hears gunshots nearby, they attribute him to hunters in the woods. However, they soon find themselves in a desperate bid for survival when they realize that they have fallen prey to a mysterious shooter.
Our main character is Roman, who you may recognize from another German Netflix movie called Rising High. But he's also been in stuff like The Reader, Race, and War Horse. He's the man who's getting married soon.
So he, along with his brother and their friends, decide to go out in the mountains for the bachelor party. I call them his friends, but most of the relationships feel very antagonistic towards Roman, or at least they're tense. Even the dynamic with his brother is off.
There is something between them that puts them at a distance from each other, which creates some intriguing conflict for us to watch. The movie has an ominous tone almost from the very beginning. We meet our characters canoeing down a river and it has this almost deliverance vibe, but that's all it shares with that other movie.
We get the feeling of isolation that's present because they're out in the woods, which can be peaceful, but also horrifying if something bad happens. I like how the first portion of the story works to establish the dynamic of the group. While we don't really know anything about any of the players, we do get a sense for their internal hierarchy and how they see each other.
Immediately from these interactions, we get a sense of foreboding. That's because they're antagonistic in certain ways to each other, but also that something devious is being planned. The tension is unnerving, but not terrifying.
It's that feeling of unease that slowly gets under your skin because you sense that something's not totally right, but you don't know what it is. I like the mysterious aspect of this group of friends being tormented by an unseen problem.
When the action starts, the story becomes an all-out chase. There's anxiety and urgency as our characters struggle to find escape. All the while, the mystery of who's doing it and why is at play in everybody's minds, including ours.
I love the scenery and the complications that the location creates for our characters. And because they're out in the wilderness, all kinds of natural dangers exist. So not only do our players have to contend with the threat of this unknown assailant, but they could also fall off a cliff or trip over some stump and smash their face.
None of it provides a sense of safety. As much as I like the compressed timeline for our characters during this chase, it does mean that certain aspects of the story also have to be compressed or even ignored. I mentioned how the friends are antagonistic towards Roman, and there seems to be a lot of tension among the group, but it's not really explained.
One source of tension is unveiled, but the rest is just kind of there, unexplained, like we're just meant to accept it and move on. Maybe they hope we'll be distracted by the thrills and not question the other things. The problem that this creates for me, though, is that everyone outside of Roman and one other character, I just don't care about.
I don't know anything about them. And from what I've seen of them in the exchanges leads me to not like them. It's almost an assumption of the movie that because we have this group of people in danger that we're going to immediately feel concerned for them.
But that just wasn't the case. So with impending peril surrounding them, I'm almost rooting for bad things to happen to them, which I think is probably not the reaction the filmmakers are hoping for. And then when we get to the reasoning for what is going on, it feels underdeveloped and even farfetched.
I understand the emotion involved and I can get behind the purpose, but it doesn't really seem to work well if we logically progress through the narrative. The story's antagonist gets a tiny bit of background creating and understanding further actions. But I still find it to be quite a leap from the impetus to where we are presently in the story.
And I know that's vague and maybe even a bit confusing, but I really don't want to give more details away because they would be spoilers. And that's really the whole backbone of this thriller. So by the end of the film, I've enjoyed the stressful chase our characters have been involved in.
The tension exists. And because much of the motives are unknown for a good portion of the story, there is a fair amount of anxiety that's built up. And I loved how the story uses the environment as its own character, providing respite and danger at all the right times.
Unfortunately, though, the underdevelopment of the characters and the lack of logical purpose for the antagonist made the story less enjoyable. On that note, I'm giving the film three out of 5 stars. I think if you're looking for something taut and thrilling, but you don't mind if there are story holes that just don't get filled, you can have some fun with this. See you next time, bye for now.