The Predator
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation | Release Date: September 14, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
48
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 49 Critic Reviews
Positive:
14
Mixed:
29
Negative:
6
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
EmpireDan JolinSep 13, 2018
Uneven, occasionally unsavoury and at times frustratingly muddled, but there’s enough bloody, ’80s-style fun in The Predator to give it a pass from long-term fans. Read full review
60
Rolling StoneDavid FearSep 13, 2018
At its best, The Predator is a movie that makes you forget there’s an iconic killer alien involved at all — with the exception of a slaughter in a lab and a shoot-out near a spaceship, the high points mostly involve the cast simply cracking wise with each other. Read full review
60
Film ThreatNorman GidneySep 13, 2018
If you can’t check your brain at the door then don’t even bother with The Predator. The film is loud, improbable, manufactured within an inch of its life, and takes absolutely no real risks with the franchise. If you want action movie comfort food, this might be your movie. Read full review
60
The GuardianBenjamin LeeSep 7, 2018
There’s definite fun to be had here and franchise fans will surely appreciate both Black’s nods to the past and his plan for the future but there’s something forgettable about its freneticism, and I struggle to imagine in 31 years if it will be thought of at all. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfSep 7, 2018
Were it not for the hard-R violence and a generous amount of computerized splatter, The Predator would play like a slightly naughtier Independence Day or Armageddon, sci-fi movies that had their squareness dirtied up by pop-culture-riffing jokesters hired to polish up a draft or two. Read full review
60
Total FilmMatthew LeylandSep 7, 2018
What Black’s movie really has going for it is pace. It starts with a crash, followed swiftly by a bang and vast swathes of wallop. The relentlessness doesn’t allow you any time to catch a yawn, but it’s also not too conducive to tension or suspense. Read full review
58
The Film StageJared MobarakSep 8, 2018
Black has never seemed like someone who needed cheap tricks to earn an honest smile. But that’s where we are and you’ll either decide to go along for the ride regardless or check out. Read full review
50
The AtlanticDavid SimsSep 14, 2018
The Predator is a confused, sloppy mess of a film, overstuffed with zingy one-liners and lacking in coherence. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperSep 13, 2018
The problem is, despite the efforts of the talented cast, the supposedly lovable former soldiers aren’t all that lovable, the primary human villain is a cocky fool with cloudy motives — and the predators don’t seem all that intimidating compared to a lot of the Earth-loathing alien invaders we see at the movies these days. Read full review
50
VoxEmily VanDerWerffSep 13, 2018
Throughout, The Predator feels like it’s been cut to the bone, in a way that ultimately requires viewers to make tiny little leaps to keep up, and all those tiny little leaps eventually add up to a big, big gap between viewer and film. Read full review
50
Film Journal InternationalRebecca PahleSep 13, 2018
In story and in visual style, The Predator feels less like a Shane Black movie than a generic, middling Hollywood blockbuster helmed by a workmanlike studio hack who occasionally asked Shane Black for advice. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinSep 13, 2018
The Predator throws enough at you to keep you distracted from seeing all the marks it’s not quite hitting. Rhodes’s pop-top vet is amusing and scary in equal measure, and little Jake Tremblay is as good as you’d hope, especially when his Rory mouths off to the Machiavellian Traeger on the subject of reverse psychology. Read full review
50
USA TodayBrian TruittSep 13, 2018
A B-movie at its heart with big-budget ambitions. Full of rampant goofiness, extreme gore, a jumbled narrative and hyperactive pacing, The Predator is also funnier and more clever than you would expect, though at the same time it’s an '80s film that doesn’t realize it’s 2018 in terms of political correctness. Read full review
50
St. Louis Post-DispatchRick BentleySep 13, 2018
In the end, The Predator is a killer when it comes to action. But, when it comes to the script, it’s just dead on arrival. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliSep 13, 2018
Black is a capable action director so the individual fight scenes are well-executed and occasionally involving. It might have helped the excitement level if we had more than a passing affinity for any of the characters. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleJosh KupeckiSep 13, 2018
For a time, The Predator offers some popcorn thrills, grisly deaths, and funny one-liners. But the film tries entirely too hard to capture the magic of those Eighties action/comedy films that Black cut his teeth on that anything resembling a cohesive plot gets set aside for another endless round of bad jokes and running gags, which I’m quite sure is by design. Read full review
50
Washington PostPat PaduaSep 12, 2018
In his effort to inject fresh blood into this gory franchise, which has already seen four sequels (including two “Alien” crossovers), the filmmaker can’t seem to summon up that old Black magic. Read full review
50
The Seattle TimesSoren AndersenSep 12, 2018
Similar to the scenario of the original picture, it’s a band of grizzled soldier types who battle the alien menaces. Missing, however, is a formidable leading-man presence in the Schwarzenegger mold. Read full review
50
We Got This CoveredMatt DonatoSep 11, 2018
The Predator guts and slashes its way to gory sci-fi mediocrity, but is further failed by abysmal pacing that loses characters, subplots and interest along the way. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreSep 10, 2018
The body count and blood and guts gets old in an instant. And while there’s something inherently hilarious in casting Jake Busey as a lab-coated scientist, the manic combat in between the blasts of banter is wearying. Read full review
50
Screen DailyTim GriersonSep 8, 2018
Tongue firmly in cheek and sporting a taste for blood, The Predator has some nasty down-and-dirty pleasures, but director Shane Black can’t entirely reconcile his lightly self-mocking tone with the film’s muscular B-movie action. Read full review
42
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatySep 12, 2018
The Predator isn’t a dumb movie exactly. But it’s not a smart one either. What it is, is something uncomfortably in between: a satire of a franchise that was already in on its own macho joke. Read full review
40
ScreenCrushMatt SingerSep 14, 2018
The Predator gets off to a promising start, and there are a couple of memorable flashes Black’s verbal wit. Then the action kicks in and the film gets worse and worse. Read full review
40
CineVueChristopher MachellSep 13, 2018
What begins as an intriguing premise is gradually squandered, used as little more as background noise for comic tics and lazy characterisation. Read full review
40
The New York TimesBen KenigsbergSep 13, 2018
The frat house atmosphere eventually gives way to tedious bloodletting. In that regard, The Predator hasn’t evolved at all. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangSep 12, 2018
From time to time its mix of foul-mouthed bro camaraderie and in-your-face violence nods in the direction of modest entertainment value, but the net effect is a whiplash-inducing muddle. The movie is full of noise and energy but devoid of real wit, coherence or impact. Read full review
40
The TelegraphRobbie CollinSep 11, 2018
While the Black magic of old was a great fit for Iron Man 3 – the writer-director’s last venture into franchise territory – it turns The Predator into a shrill, murky, retrograde bore, whose handful of punchy ideas get lost in the cracks of its terminally haywire plot. Read full review
40
TheWrapWilliam BibbianiSep 10, 2018
There are lots of jokes, even though they’re only sporadically funny. There are lots of action sequences, even though they’re edited haphazardly and sometimes hard to follow. There are lots of monsters, even though the more we learn about them, the harder it is to care. Read full review
40
VarietyDennis HarveySep 7, 2018
All of this is silly, borderline senseless, lively, and without any real rooting value at all. The supposedly lovable misfits here aren’t, no matter how the cast members feign hilarity at their potty-mouthing. Not that it matters — because nothing does in this expensive toy of a film, which ultimately works on the level of a disco ball. It’s shiny, it moves, and is accompanied by much noise. Read full review
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