Prey, Creating Film for Indigenous Female Hunters

Prey, Creating Film for Indigenous Female Hunters
Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey reimagines the Predator franchise by situating its primal themes of hunting, survival, and power in the 18th-century Comanche Nation. Its focus on Naru, a young Indigenous woman striving to prove herself as a hunter, the film expands beyond the science fiction action genre into an exploration of identity, resistance, and ecological awareness.
Hunting as Commentary
Hunting drives Prey’s story at every level; survival, ritual, and existential contest. It becomes a metaphor for hierarchy and control: the Predator hunts to assert dominance, the French trappers hunt for profit, and the Comanche warriors hunt for sustenance and honor. Naru, however, redefines the act as one of balance rather than domination. She observes and ultimately turns the Predator’s own tools against it. Her intelligence and adaptability invert the power dynamic, suggesting survival is not a product of brute force but of understanding one’s environment and learning from it.
The Hunters and Masculinity
Predator: Embodies a hyper-technological, performative masculinity; strength as domination and destruction. Its hunting is ritualized violence, concerned with proving superiority rather than necessity.
French Trappers: Represent exploitative colonial masculinity; greedy, wasteful, and disconnected from the natural world. Their use of guns and traps reflects reliance on industrial power, mirroring the Predator’s weaponry but without its code of honor.
Comanche Warriors: Reflect a traditional but evolving masculinity based on skill, courage, and respect for nature. The film juxtaposes these representations to critique dependence on physical dominance as the measure of worth.
Subverting the “Hardboy” hero
Earlier Predator films celebrated the “hardbody” hero (muscular, stoic, and armed to the teeth). Prey reverses this model through Naru, whose physical slightness and quick thinking replace brute muscle. She wins by outsmarting her enemy, not overpowering him; but by using the Predator’s laser mask against it, Naru dismantles both the monster and the action genre’s myth of invulnerable masculinity.
Indigenous and Feminine Agency
Naru challenges both the genre’s and Hollywood’s expectations. Her story isn’t one of exceptionalism detached from her culture; instead, her strength is rooted in communal knowledge and respect for the land. Unlike Hollywood’s often one-dimensional depictions of Indigenous people as mystical or savage, Naru is a thinker, healer, and warrior; a full human being. Her journey affirms Indigenous knowledge as a legitimate form of resistance and strategy.
Yet, the film walks a fine line: while it empowers its protagonist, the structure of a lone warrior’s triumph risks echoing Western hero narratives. The Comanche-dubbed version helps counteract this by centering Indigenous language and worldview, grounding her in community rather than isolation.
Noble Shots and Cinematic Technology
Opening Hunt Sequence: A tracking shot follows Naru through tall grass as she practices throwing her tomahawk. The smooth movement and shallow focus mirror her growing mastery and foreshadow the Predator’s surveillance style.
Bear Attack Scene: The camera alternates between frantic handheld shots of Naru running and wide-angle shots showing the invisible Predator wrestling the bear. When the creature becomes visible in blood, it’s both horrifying and awe-inspiring, a symbolic “reveal” of the hunter painted by its victim’s life force.
Final Confrontation: The editing is tight and rhythmic, emphasizing cause and effect. Every trap, every movement builds toward the Predator’s self-inflicted death. The deliberate pacing contrasts the bombastic editing of earlier franchise entries, reinforcing the theme that patience and intellect conquer rage and power.
Through Prey, Trachtenberg transforms the franchise’s macho survivalism into a study of intelligence, observation, and balance. Hunting becomes less a show of power and more an act of understanding the cycles of predator and prey; crucially, of knowing when the roles must reverse.