Prey

So you get 3 really top actors in Suvari, Hirsch and Phillippe to do a survival film in the Kalahari, you'd expect it to be great right? Wrong.

First off this is not the actors fault, it was the unimaginative dialogue and direction, no character building, scenes were so obviously rushed that one of the characters actually dies without even showing what actually happened LOL

This film is like some rich guy from Dubai or Saudi offered an obscene amount of money for these actors to be in their masterful project and it absolutely sucked.

The use of lions being the main predator in the film is just lame and actually put's them in a very bad light.

Could this really be the same Ryan Philippe who was in "Cruel Intentions"? Are things really that bad? Well now he's "Andrew" who runs a Christian missionary deep in the Kalahari. Forced to flee, they engage the rather untrustworthy services of pilot "Grun" (Emile Hirsch) and next thing they are amidst some wreckage in the middle of a wild game reserve with loads of hungry lions, hyenas, scorpions and a few heavily armed freedom fighters. Can they survive? There are some beautiful animals featured in this film and the Californian Vasquez Rocks National Park serves well enough as a location double, but the rest of this is all really quite poorly written and executed before a denouement that I could have done with half an hour earlier. There's nothing about the characters for us to care about, one being determined to smuggle artefacts out of the country whilst an other wants to indoctrinate the locals with a lifetime supply of bibles. Maybe he thought it was called "Pray" instead? It's not exactly predicable, it's not that structured - it sort of meanders along desperate to generate some sense of menace from it's arid and hostile environment, but all to underwhelming avail. Nope, nothing at all to recommend this to anyone, sorry.

I have a relatively low threshold to meet for a movie to be passable. I dont mind some bad acting, bad special effects, loose plot holes, etc as long as the movie has some sort of storyline and a bit of a twist. This movie had nothing. No plot, no hero, no villain, nothing. Barely any animals are even shown and there's no big showdown between "man and beast". The acting was horrendous from all points which is shocking because some of them are decent actors in other films. The ending was the best part because it meant I could turn it off. There is absolutely no redeeming qualities in this entire film. Please do yourself a favour and find ANYTHING else to watch.

A briefly captivating and partially thrilling story about a motley crew stalked and threatened by giant killer lions. A young couple (Ryan Philippe, Mena Suvari) have to flee from a paramilitary group in an African nation after traveling there to introduce the Christian religion. But the plane driven by Grun (Emile Hirsch) crashes and the group of travelers (Ryan Philippe, Mena Suvari, Jeremy Tardy, Dylan Flashner, Tristan Thompson) find themselves besieged by huge lions and confined almost entirely to the dangerous savannah, resulting in fateful consequences. And to make matters worse, the killer beasts continue to kill and they are attacked by soldiers while are in the wrecked plane where they have taken refuge. Fight for life!. Not an ordinary animal!. Prey to survive!. !. Sometimes the rustling in the bushes is actually a monster!. Human emotion laid bare!

This is a tragedy-adventure-drama film that took a few weeks to shoot in California, although I think it's more of a horror drama than an adventure film, as it deals with huge, hungry lions that have seemingly mythical and vengeful qualities, in order to relentlessly kill people. After their plane crashes, they must fight for their lives against beasts and bloodthirsty soldiers; the pilot is played in a mediocre way by Emile Hirsch and the young couple forced to abandon their Christian missionary station in the Kalahari Desert after being threatened with death by an extremist militant gang is played by Ryan Phillippe and Mena Suvari, although the latter has a secondary appearance.

This is an uneven survival drama with not too much appeal and minimal quality in which the actors give all the value to a heart-stopping script, concerning a group of fearful people who find themselves pursued by huge lions who try to prove that the savannah has only one apex predator, themselves. The film is average and nothing special, it overuses computerized images of lions; in fact, the animals that appear in the film are generated in 3D; finally, the director to give more authenticity to the images, decided to bring a real one to the set one day. It contains some passable scenes, brilliant cinematography by cameraman Farhad Ahmed Dehlvi, an undistinguishing soundtrack, complemented by spectacular highlights when the ferocious lions attack here and there and adding other additional attractions. The cast is acceptable but not remarkable, such as: Ryan Phillippe as the stubborn husband who will stop at nothing to protect his wife Suvari, a role that sits easily on his shoulders and Emilie Hirsch as the tough pilot. There is also a brief description of the terrorist organization Boko Haram that mercilessly hunts and kills Christians, it is an Islamist jihadist terrorist organization based in northeastern Nigeria, which is also active in Chad, Niger, northern Cameroon and Mali. In 2016, the group split, leading to the emergence of a hostile faction known as the West African Province of the Islamic State.

The film turns out to be very average, tending towards the low, there are other much better films about people besieged by the African dangers and the wildlife of the savannah, such as: ¨Sands of the Kalahari¨ (1965) by Cy Endfield with Stanley Baker, Stuart Whitman, Susannah York; ¨A Far Off Place¨ (1993) by Mikael Salomon with Reese Witherspoon, Ethan Embry, Jack Thompson; ¨Prey¨ (2007) by Darrell Root with Bridget Moynahan, Peter Weller and ¨Beast¨ (2022) by Baltasar Kormákur with Idris Elba.

The feature film was directed in an irregular manner by Mukunda Michael Dewil, being supposedly based on real events. But it was not filmed in Africa but at Vasquez Rocks Natural Area Park, Escondido Canyon Rd., Agua Dulce, California. Mukunda is a craftsman who has made a few films without much success and usually on a low budget, although on occasions he has managed to gather well-known actors: Emile Hirsch, Paul Walker, Kate Bosworth, Ashley Greene, Ryan Philippe, Mena Suvari for his cheap productions, which include the following films: Vehicle 19 (2013), Retribution (2011), Collide (2022), The Immaculate Room (2022) and Kalahari (2024). Score: 4/10. A short-budget and below-average ordinary film dealing with African survival.

I wanted to love this movie. It has a fantastic cast and going into it I had really high hopes. What you get is a movie that could have been really great, but in the end was poorly executed. What will likely be the draw for most is the animal attack aspect. Survival horror... man vs nature. It's present, but they decided to take the Jaws approach here. A few people fall prey to the wildlife but the events are completely left to your imagination. I felt like they fell flat in that department in a big way. I wasn't looking for a gore fest, but you have almost ZERO animal human interaction here. The initial attack was a shock to me, but not in a good way... the way it was done. Very ambiguous. You see the characters and they are fine. When we're brought back to the scene after a cut to other characters, the attack has already taken place seemingly some time ago. I just wasn't a fan of how it all went down. Some characters do absolutely ridiculous things that make no sense. There's at least one huge continuity issue. Then there's an almost ridiculous spiritual undertone to this that I also felt was poorly executed. One of the main characters is dealing with a crisis of faith and he makes what I feel are some ridiculous choices that are supposed to be faith based. I feel like the writer or director has the notion that having faith negates the ability to reason. Indeed I've known some people like this, but it's not the rule. The kind of people who don't lock their door because God's looking out for them. Inevitably they're burglarized or worse. God gave you the ability to reason and a lock to keep people out 🤷‍♂️ I digress... This could have been a good film especially with the main cast. Unfortunately it wasn't, and for numerous reasons.