🎬 X-Files Review: Predator – Badlands
1987 gave us one of the rawest creature flicks ever made. Now Predator – Badlands drags that legend through the dust and into the future — part survival horror, part redemption arc, and 100 percent Gen-X attitude.
by: Curb Fail Studios staff
1987 gave us one of the rawest creature flicks ever made. Now Predator – Badlands drags that legend through the dust and into the future — part survival horror, part redemption arc, and 100 percent Gen-X attitude.
Back to the Hunt
Director Dan Trachtenberg (Prey) returns with a lean, mean sequel that actually feels like a Predator movie again. Set in a scorched, near-future wasteland, it drops a new cast — led by Elle Fanning — into a world where the line between hunter and hunted barely exists.
Forget bloated CGI fests; this thing moves like an old-school actioner. Sparse dialogue, heavy tension, and a camera that loves grit more than gloss. The tech’s new, but the DNA’s pure 1980s menace.
Why It Hits Gen-X
We grew up on muscles, mud, and one-liners. The Badlands crew bleeds that same energy — just with more scars and less spray-tan. It taps straight into that Gen-X survivalism: make it work, fix it yourself, and don’t trust the system to save you.
Where millennials chase multiverses, we still chase grit. Badlands gives it back in spades.
The New Mythology
Trachtenberg builds on what Prey started — turning Predator into folklore instead of franchise. The Yautja’s still the ultimate hunter, but here it’s almost symbolic: the physical embodiment of everything trying to wipe out what’s left of humanity.
For Gen-X, that reads like a metaphor for burnout, resilience, and refusing to die quiet. That’s Common-X territory, man.
🎧 Sound, Sweat, and Score
The soundtrack pounds like metal scraped against concrete — industrial echoes, tribal drums, and synth nods that wink at Alan Silvestri’s original score. It’s the kind of sound design you feel in your ribs, perfect for Skullcandy headphones and late-night treadmill rage sessions.
Final Verdict
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️☆ (4.5/5)
Lean, mean, and smarter than it looks. Predator – Badlands respects its roots but doesn’t worship them. It’s the sequel Gen-X deserved — the one that remembers the jungle, the fear, and the fight.