Predators 6.5/10

I will admit that I am not a fan of the original Predator that came out in the eighties. In fact its one of the few iconic eighties movies that I don't like, as those films are some of my absolute favorites. I don't know why, but it just didn't speak to me. The sequel equally didn't do it for me, and the Alien vs. Predator franchise just seemed completely hokey to me, although I did watch them. This movie though, I enjoyed, and it bucked the trend of reboots of old franchises being absolutely terrible.

This movie is essentially a survival horror movie. People that know this genre understand what to expect, and it really doesn't deviate from that very much. This movie does very well in casting its rag tag group of survivals, which is integral to any survival horror film. Of course this characters are just archetypes with no real depth, but hey, this is Predators not Citizen Kane. Walton Goggins (best known for the shield, and for you real nerds Major League: Back to the Minors) was excellent and hilarious as a crazy death row murderer. Topher Grace was also really good, and I generally hate him. Laurence Fishburne was also good in a bit of a cameo role, and any movie with Danny Trejo generally gets two thumbs up from me. Oddly, the only thing that I mildly disproved of was Adrien Brody, and he is probably the best actor of the bunch. Its not that he was bad in the film, but lets be honest, its just hard to buy Brody as a toughened amoral professional mercenary, he is just hard to buy as a bad ass.

Overall, this movie isn't deep. There isn't any setup, just boom, people together, on a planet, dealing with it. They devise they are on an alien planet being hunter ridiculously fast, and cope with it way better than they should, lets be honest, most people would go catatonic at that point, but who cares. Just show me the funky alien killing machines, and thats what they did. Like I said folks, there is nothing new here, no revolutionary plot twists, just pretty well done survival horror. If you enjoy this sort of thing you will not be disappointed, if you are looking for movie of the year potential then you will be. I would recommend seeing it if you are a remotely a fan of the franchise.