Hunter Prey

Hunter Prey is living, breathing comic strip, lifted almost panel for panel, straight out of the pages of the European Heavy Metal magazine. Everything from the brilliant, understated simplicity of the story and characters to the vibrant color palette is inspired by great comic artists such as Jean Giraud, Enki Bilal, and Phillipe Drulliet. It is refreshing to see a film that so wonderfully captured the starkness and desolate reality of the landscape without the dreadful, MTV type editing or overbearing imagery thrown at the viewer, utilizing the sparse nature of the dialogue, letting the visual imagery tell story. The only down side to that of course, is that American audiences will not understand the subtleties and undercurrents of this marvelous piece of work. In the world of American cinema dominated by the Michael Bays and James Camerons of the world, it was delightful to see such subtle and artistically driven sensibilities especially from an American director. While most have cited "Star Wars" as the inspiration for this film, I see much more of a French new wave and Japanese influence. It has the European artistic qualities and the Japanese, Kurasawa elements to the story. If you're a fan of seventies fantasy art, or the old Metal Hurlant comic strips, you will absolutely fall in love with Hunter Prey.

First thing is I must say, this film looks so stunning and captivating, it's like watching one of those discovery channel nature shows, just on an alien world. I was blown away at the level of design and attention to detail in absolutely everything in this movie, especially for the low budget. This director has a great eye. The locations were awe-inspiring and lent themselves well to the story. I give films like this a lot of credit. It's hard to be ambitious in this genre without the money and the means. Most who try, fail miserably where "Hunter Prey" succeeds.

Something which really stood out to me while watching this film, was the sense of the director wanting to tell a larger story and make a bigger movie. I could actually feel the filmmaker striving to be James Cameron only with Roger Corman's checkbook.

"Hunter Prey" takes a little while to get going and parts of it are very derivative, but once it does, it delivers on a level that few films in this budget range can. 8/10

When I stumbled upon this flick I am not sure what I expected. A lot of your sci-fi or monster movie titles can really be hit or miss. Well, this was "hit". I really enjoyed this movie. So many times with a sci-fi movie it seems like they try to cram way to much into the movie to make up for poor writing. Not the case with Hunter-Prey. The story was great and it had just enough high quality effects to really make this exciting. I think that is what I liked best was the fact that, because of the writing, the entire story seemed somewhat possible, if not completely believable. I will be keeping my eyes open for a sequel too. The door was left wide open for a part 2, or even TV show.

They have the same budgets, and probably more. Hunter Prey is just the kind of thing that channel should be filled with, but instead all we get is silly, dimwitted, fodder designed for nothing beyond a Saturday evening with beer and burgers. I hope to god this film doesn't wind up on SyFy. Hunter Prey was better than some genre films I've seen that even got a theater showing. It has all the right elements that make a good science fiction film. Great characters and production design, beautiful cinematography, lots of aliens and a good story. What more can you ask for? Hunter Prey delivers the goods and left me wanting more. Bring on the sequel!

I would have liked to have seen the version of Hunter Prey where Collora followed his gut instincts and made a pure art film, instead of trying to make it more commercial or sellable. I see this all the time with indie genre films, particularly ones that don't have a bankable star in them. The producers feel they need an element that can take the place of a notable actor, especially in the foreign markets. What that usually ends up being is some really awful, bad CG ridden, formulaic mess that ends up on the SciFi channel. What we have here, is a film that thankfully isn't that, but what it does end up being is a bit of a confused movie, unable to define itself.

It's good, but it's clunky in places. Sometimes this is a result of performance issues, but sometimes it lies more in the writing and editing choices. There are a few elements of Hunter Prey that simply don't match up or make much sense.

The most glaring example of this, is the score. It's fantastic, but doesn't fit the movie, especially after the first act. It's way too big for a small, personal movie like this. I just felt like the filmmaker was trying to pound me over the head with music that maybe was representing what he wanted to be there visually and perhaps didn't have the budget to do. It seemed like they took the score from a big, popcorn action movie and stuck it on Hunter Prey in an effort to make it seem bigger or more commercial, but all it does, is make the audience wish there was more movie or less music. A more subdued, un-inflected, moody soundtrack would have served this film much better.

I'm predicting this film will eventually become Collora's "Blade Runner" of sorts... An awe inspiring, visual feast with a story that some people will get into and some won't. Like most art films, it will be unsuccessful and commercially disappointing at first, with an audience that slowly builds over time. As his body of work grows and he makes more films, people will come to appreciate Hunter Prey.