Editorials
‘Predator’ Gave Us Not One But TWO Epic Monster Reveals
“There’s something out there waiting for us, and it ain’t no man.”
The typical slasher movie formula sees a group of people, often teens, stalked and hunted by a relentless killer with bladed weapons. Predator, released in theaters on June 12, 1987, retooled the slasher rules, swapping out vulnerable adolescents with a well-armed elite military squad prepared to take on guerilla camps in the jungle. Yet, not even they were equipped for the extraterrestrial threat that targeted them as worthy prey.
Seeing special ops so effortlessly dispatched in the grisliest ways is one effective way to increase the threat level of any horror antagonist, alien or otherwise, but director John McTiernan layers in gradual reveals about the eponymous hunter in a way that launched a franchise and clinched the creature’s movie icon status.
This movie monster has not one, but two major reveals.
The Setup
Vietnam War veteran Major Alan “Dutch” Schaefer (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his elite team of Mac (Bill Duke), Poncho (Richard Chaves), Blain (Jesse Ventura), Billy (Sonny Landham), and Hawkins (Shane Black) are tasked with a rescue mission in the South American jungle along with CIA officer Al Dillon (Carl Weathers). The team discovers a downed chopper en route to retrieving their target, its inhabitants skinned completely of flesh.
But they stay on mission. The subsequent retrieval attempt from a guerilla camp ends in bloodshed and gunfire, with the team opting to then move to the extraction point with the camp’s sole survivor, Anna (Elpidia Carrillo). But the explosive violence catches the attention of an unseen entity, one that begins picking them off one by one.
The Monster Reveal
“What the hell are you?”
For much of Predator‘s runtime, the titular creature employs a cloaking device that camouflages it in the jungle canopy, going undetected by Dutch’s group. Quick blurs of movement give only the barest hints of its silhouette, but droplets of neon green blood on foliage confirm that whatever is stalking the military unit isn’t human. McTiernan frequently interjects the Predator’s (Kevin Peter Hall) point-of-view via thermal vision to build out the creature’s presence and threat level. It’s not until much later that we see the entity uncloaked, a humanoid beast with advanced tech.
In keeping with slasher villain form, the Predator hides its true face behind a mask. Predator saves the reveal to herald in the climax: Dutch’s final confrontation with the monster that’s eviscerated his entire team, save for Anna. Dutch realizes this creature has an honor code and sends Anna to the chopper to safety while he creates a distraction. A confrontation leads to the permanent destruction of the alien’s cloaking device before Dutch falls into the river and escapes onto the muddy bank, where the glitching tech reveals the first full look at the creature in full armor. The design is so cool and unique, and the reveal scene even cooler, that Predator could leave it there. But McTiernan saves his best trick for last: unmasking the jungle hunter to reveal its reptilian face and spreading mandibles just as it corners Dutch.
Schwarzenegger solidifies this iconic reveal with an appropriate response to the unmasking, uttering the iconic line: “You’re one ugly motherf*cker!”
The Death Toll
Dutch and his men come upon four skinned bodies on their way to their mission, early signs of the creature’s handiwork. From there, Dutch’s men are systematically sliced, diced, maimed, blown up, and eviscerated by the intergalactic hunter in the goriest ways possible.
This is a ruthless hunter that takes pride in its kills, as evidenced by the way it rips out Sonny’s spine and cleanses his skull and bones to keep as a trophy. It also exhibits an honor code, which means not hunting unarmed prey, which further sets this movie monster apart; this is an intelligent creature operating beyond basic animalistic instinct.
The Impact
Predator opened to number one at the box office and earned Stan Winston an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects. The film marked the start of a franchise that’s now five installments deep, not including the two crossover films with the Alien franchise. The prequel film Prey proved there’s still plenty of life left in this series, with Badlands on the way.
It’s safe to say this enduring franchise isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Where to Watch
You can stream Predator on Apple TV+, Hulu, and Tubi, and it’s also available on 4K, Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital.
In television, “Monster of the Week” refers to the one-off monster antagonists featured in a single episode of a genre series. The popular trope was originally coined by the writers of 1963’s The Outer Limits and is commonly employed in The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and so much more. Pitting a series’ protagonists against featured creatures offered endless creative potential, even if it didn’t move the serialized storytelling forward in huge ways. Considering the vast sea of inventive monsters, ghouls, and creatures in horror film and TV, we’re borrowing the term to spotlight horror’s best on a weekly basis.
From child-eating witches to village-burning dragons, fairy tales have always had a foot in the horror genre. That’s why it makes sense that, for every The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia, there are also darker and more adult-oriented stories about magical worlds inhabited by ravenous monsters and cruel villains.
Funnily enough, these sinister tales were precisely the ones that I gravitated towards back when I was a kid, and I was reminded of this while watching Netflix’s recently released I Am Frankelda, Mexico’s first ever feature-length stop-motion animation and one hell of an entertaining parable about the intersection between fiction and reality.
In honor of this special kind of horror-adjacent fairy tale, today I’d like to share this list recommending six Dark Fantasy films that horror fans might enjoy.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be defining Dark Fantasy as fantastical stories that don’t shy away from the more macabre elements that fuel classic fairy tales. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own grim favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
I’m fascinated by bizarre attempts at blockbuster filmmaking – especially when the resulting movies are somehow still fun despite their corporate-mandated origins. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is precisely one of these strangely compelling studio projects, as this surprisingly successful action-thriller boasts a lot of heart (and tongue-in-cheek humor) for a CGI-heavy creature feature.
Directed by Dead Snow’s Tommy Wirkola, Witch Hunters re-frames the classic fairy tale as an origin story for a duo of badass monster-slayers. Of course, it’s the flick’s anachronistic aesthetic and overall visual flair that make it stand out from other action-horror endeavors from around the same time.
5. The Wolf House (2018)
Made in the tradition of faux cursed films in the same vein as Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made, the eerie backstory to 2018’s Chilean animated flick The Wolf House (La Casa Lobo in the original Spanish) already makes it a nightmarish experience before the flick even really begins.
After all, the movie is presented to us as a faux propaganda film produced by the leader of a death cult (heavily inspired by the real life Colonia Dignidad), with this hybrid animated feature using complex movie magic to simulate a single uninterrupted shot as it tells the story of a lazy young girl who runs away from an isolated colony and encounters a creepy old house in the woods.
4. The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Out of all the Monty Python alumni, Terry Gilliam has had the most interesting career outside of the original comedy group. From fascinating canceled projects (such as his scrapped adaptation of Watchmen) to dystopian parodies that feel more relevant by the minute (1985’s Brazil), even his “lesser” films are still intriguing in their own way.
2005’s The Brothers Grimm is one such project, with this peculiar movie attempting to combine the comedian-turned-filmmaker’s unique visual style with a more blockbuster-oriented plot reimagining the titular brothers as con-artists rather than mere writers. The end result isn’t exactly a masterpiece, but it’s still a legitimately fun ride with plenty of memorable monsters and wonderful performances by both the late, great Heath Ledger and Matt Damon.
3. Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)
2010’s Dante’s Inferno game may have a reputation as something of an unapologetic God of War clone, but I’d argue that the now-obscure game was aesthetically unique enough to deserve a bigger fanbase. However, while the title remains trapped on the seventh console generation, its highly underrated anime adaptation is a lot easier to get a hold of!
Animated by 6 different studios in order to make the 9 circles of hell feel unique from each other, this may not be a completely faithful adaptation of Dante Alighieri’s poem, but it’s still one heck of a great (not to mention gory) time that I’d highly recommend to fans of Netflix’s take on Castlevania.
2. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)
My personal favorite entry in the Underworld franchise, Rise of the Lycans, is a highly ambitious prequel that actually works better if you haven’t had the story spoiled to you by the previous Underworld films.
While the rest of the series features plenty of urban fantasy elements as the movies combine machine guns and modern environments with gothic storytelling, Patrick Tatopoulos’ prequel fully embraces its fantastical origins and tells a classic tale about a doomed romance between a werewolf and a vampire amid a medieval uprising.
And the best part is that we get a lot more Michael Sheen as the fan-favorite Lucian.
1. Solomon Kane (2011)
One of my personal favorite movies on this list, MJ Basset’s criminally underseen adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s other iconic warrior is thoroughly steeped in horror ambience and features plenty of memorable monsters. However, it’s also a classic origin story for a swashbuckling hero that wouldn’t feel out of place in a tabletop RPG.
While I’ve already written about how the film deftly combines both horror and fantasy elements without breaking the bank, I’ll never pass up an opportunity to recommend the bizarre movie where James Purefoy expertly plays a puritan John Wick.
It’s just too bad that we never got the other films in this intended trilogy.
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