Prey [DVD]

Good film. Initially it may be hard to understand what the hell is going on but it soon becomes apparent. It's about a group of people who own an Industrial fertiliser company who go on a hunting trip. The reason for the hunt and who they are hunting is kept quiet at first but it is soon revealed. Great acting, great special effects (no cgi thankfully) and pretty gripping with a couple of twists which are easy enough to see coming. Not a bad ending either. Other than Nathan (Gregoire Colin), none of the characters are that likable and theres no character development so you probably wont care much if they live or die. It's not in the upper echelons of french horror but it's certainly not the worst and is well worth watching. I enjoyed it. You will probably only watch it once though.

Nathan and his wife Claire discover that she is pregnant, so they're going to start a new life in the city. They are going to announce the news to her family, but the family get together doesn't go as planned. Claire's father has asked her to stay and work for at least another six months as the family pharmaceutical business isn't doing so well. At the same time this is going on, a group of scared deer have inexplicably jumped into the electrified fence of a farm trying to escape. When the corpses of the animals are inspected, it's clear to see that they have deep wounds and bite marks on them. The family which includes Claire's dad, his brother and their father are going into the privately owned woods to hunt the predator that's been attacking other animals, after an argument between Nathan and Claire about her staying to work for another six months, she's been delaying the move because of the family business for four years, she even talks of having an abortion, Nathan agrees to join them on the hunt. Once they reach the cabin and arm themselves with hunting rifles, the group set out to find whatever it is that attacked the deer. They soon make the discovery that all of the wildlife is dying off, including thousands of dead washed up fish. Claire's father Nicolas soon confesses that he's been experimenting with stronger fertilisers and that's the cause of what's going on, they are then attacked by a group of wild boars. As the daylight fades, so do the chances of the group making it out of the woods alive.

The acting is strong from the mostly male cast, Claire is barely in it after the first and last 10 minutes, so it's mainly the four men who are out hunting. Despite the fact that the acting is good, they are let down a little by the characters being so bland. There's a family feud going on between the men, but they're all pretty dull and unlikable. When they are getting attacked, I honestly wasn't bothered whether they survived it or not. Antoine Blossier makes his directing/writing debut with Prey, and he certainly shows some potential. Technically the film is very well made, it just seems to lack that something extra to turn it into a great film. From what he's achieved here, Blossier may have a decent future as a director.

It's a very short film at just 80 minutes long, and despite the fast pace it still bores at times. It's hard to explain, the action hardly slows down after the opening 25 minutes, but it failed to fully hold my attention. The effects are good, the boars were all done practically with no ridiculous looking CGI creatures gliding around. There's a decent amount of blood and some pretty gruesome scenes of dead animals. There's just a few too many things that irked me throughout the film, such as the over use of certain techniques. The constant shaking bushes to show that somethings there, the constant growls that seem to be used again and again. What really irritated me was that it seemed like only the boars had been effected by the fertiliser which seems improbable, even more annoying when the front cover to the dvd shows a bear among other creatures. If they were being attacked by an assortment of animals the film would become more realistic and instantly more enjoyable, perhaps it was just a budget factor that the animals were just boars. I did appreciate that the film wasn't just about a group of people trying to avoid getting eaten, they actually tried to have character development and the fact that Nathan and Nicolas clearly don't like each other gave the film a little edge.

The film is a French movie so is in French with English subtitles, but there's English subtitles only. The picture quality is good for dvd, but there are no extras unless you count the trailers for a few other films before it starts. Prey is a very decent creature feature that I enjoyed, though it seems to be lacking a little something. It's well worth getting and i'll definitely be watching it again, it's just not as good as some other creature gone bad movies such as Jaws, Razorback, Black Water or Rogue. A well acted, very good effort from a promising first time director.

This blood-drenched, earthy, dirty French movie is a faithful watch for everyone pleased that modern horror movies sometimes do sidestep the 'I see dead people' drama/cannibalistic infections/slasher/asbo-brats/torture porn, and a well-made animal-based horror is potentially a horror-fan like me's dream, but it unravels after a good night's temporary companionship, undone by the cheating front cover that promises a combined species grand assault that never happens, little, if any shots of real animals, and a largely unsatisfactory feeling that this meaty piece was taken from the oven and hob too quickly, instead of simmering nicely. Wild Boar are a great choice for the deserved threat to our argumentative and obnoxious animal killers combing the nearby woods for what's killing the resident deer (another ideal threat never used), and the tension mounts for some time, and there is a fair amount of gore and pain on show up to a point, but the attacks are frustratingly barely-seen, and the close-ups recall the less dextrous days of 'Razorback' (which still probably remains the best killer pig vehicle), considering the shortcomings on this one, despite how effects/make-up are supposed to have advanced since 1983, and actually make it look like the men aren't under attack from an animal at all, yet when they're being harrassed, tracked and hunted, you do feel these barely-seen creatures are hunting them with an expert tracking system and you feel fear, excitement, anticipation, and then it kind of wafts away on the breeze. This to me does not snort total success. Nor do the lack of people that really need to suffer animal wrath in every walk of life. Why concentrate on these few? Worse, there's the usual in-breeding, nature-tampering by Man excuse that can't seem to ever grasp the notion that animals have a perfect right to attack us for as many reasons as we do each other and they don't need US to control, excuse and explain away any thought they may have on this score. The biggest threat to horror creativity these days is clearly lack of imagainative risk.

There's no extras on this film to speak of, perhaps unsurprisingly, but 'Prey' (while no relation to the far better US killer Lion movie made some years before) is an enjoyably cooked breakfast while its sizzling away in the undergrowth, but it goes cold quickly out in the open air, so I find myself in the unusual position of being little bothered of a repeat viewing, which I know won't season its rather regrettable deficiencies. Nonetheless I may keep it; it's certainly not bad or even indifferent, as the Nature Fights Back movement of the 70s will never happen again, and most of those movies remain frustratingly out of print. Maybe the slightly earlier, than this, 'Pig-Hunt' is better, maybe it isn't, I don't know, having avoided it so far, but now I wonder if that might better bring home the human bacon.