When it comes to the Predator series, the most important lesson to learn from the originals is that the best Predator stories aren’t *really* about the Predator – the most surefire recipe is, in fact, ‘something totally unrelated is happening, and then a Predator shows up’. It’s a strategy Dan Trachtenberg used to great effect with 2022’s Prey and has now deployed excellently again in Predator: Killer of Killers, an animated anthology that pits some of history’s greatest warriors against the Yautja that proves Trachtenberg is the perfect pair of hands to steer this franchise.
Split into three tonally distinct chapters, Killer of Killers doubles down on Prey’s period-piece drama; the human warriors here are a Viking queen caught in a cycle of vengeance and blood debts, two feuding samurai/ninja brothers in Edo-period Japan, and a charming Latino fighter pilot in World War 2. Traveling through the periods in chronological order, Killer of Killers actually opens with its weakest segment amongst the Vikings, but even this tale is still pretty darn good. The Japan slice is the best, nearly wordless and telling its story entirely through fluid action, while the World War 2 stuff has the most compelling characters, with the Vikings powered mostly by sheer brutality.
The animated nature of this particular beast (in a style most reminiscent of Netflix’s Arcane) allows Trachtenberg and co-director Joshua Wassung to make things gruesome, even by this series’ standards. It lends a weight and fear to the action, the overwhelming power of the Predator coming across in a thrillingly visceral fashion, forcing the human warriors to push themselves to limits of both their physical strength and battlefield ingenuity. Though the animation could have perhaps done more to differentiate itself from section to section, the Predators are all nicely separate from one another.
In Scandinavia, we’ve got a pure monster, the tallest and heaviest of the three, punching heads off bodies, while Japan’s Yautja is a more cunning and patient beast, and the World War 2 aerial hunter is much more tech-reliant. They’re all formidable foes and the best thing about Killer of Killers really is just how consistently exciting it is, never slowing down the action for exposition’s sake (Micho Robert Rutare’s script deserves real praise for how cleanly it expands this universe and its lore without ever feeling intrusive or plotty).
As with Prey, it does feel a bit of a shame that Killer of Killers can’t be seen on a big screen, being dumped straight on to Disney+, but it certainly whets the appetite for Trachtenberg to finally get his in-cinemas Predator outing later this year with Badlands. ‘Fan-appeal’ is an often lethal thing to pursue in franchise media (looking at you, 2020s non-Andor Star Wars), but Trachtenberg clearly just *gets it* when it comes to Predator. By its very design, Killer of Killers might lack some depth, but when it packs so many thrills into its rapid sub-90 minute runtime, it feels downright churlish to complain.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 