The Prey Film Review
By: Joseph Perry (Twitter - Uphill Both Ways Podcast)
It’s The Most Dangerous Game meets undercover-cop-in-peril in director Jimmy Henderson’s The Prey. This Cambodian action flick should appeal to action film fans who like their guns blazing and their martial arts action fast and wild, and its old-school drive-in/grindhouse B-movie appeal should add to its draw.
Gu Shangwie stars as Xin, an undercover cop arrested in a bust of cyber thieves. Not wanting to blow his cover, he is shipped off to a prison in a remote jungle area where the warden (Vithaya Pansringarm of Only God Forgives) — who is naturally evil and corrupt — sends him into that jungle with some other inmates to be hunted for big money by a group of wealthy men, one of whom is prone to psychotic episodes. When Xin’s colleague Detective Li (Dy Sonita) comes to extricate him from prison, she adds a damsel in distress trope to the mix.
Henderson, who cowrote the screenplay with Michael Hodgson, keeps things running lean and very mean, including a startlingly graphic gore gag. The Prey is a heck of a debut showcase for Gu, who impresses in a performance low on dialogue and high in hand-to-hand combat, improvised weapons, and gunplay. The fight scenes are well choreographed and edited. Pansringarm brings his usual expertise as a villain, and the performances from the rest of the cast range from really good to scenery chewing. A nice surprise is that the baddies don’t get knocked off in the usual, expected order, making things a little less predictable.
The Prey has no pretensions. It is meant only to entertain with a high-octane spin on a familiar story, and it does just that for its 90-minute running time. If you are in the mood for some heroic dispatching of villains, this film delivers.
The Prey, from Dark Star Pictures, debuts in virtual theaters on August 21 and on North American VOD on August 25.
Joseph Perry is one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast (whenitwascool.com/up-hill-both-ways-podcast/) and Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast (decadesofhorror.com/category/classicera/). He also writes for the film websites Diabolique Magazine (diaboliquemagazine.com), Gruesome Magazine (gruesomemagazine.com), The Scariest Things (scariesthings.com), Ghastly Grinning (ghastlygrinning.com), and Horror Fuel (horrorfuel.com), and film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope (videoscopemag.com) and Drive-In Asylum (etsy.com/shop/GroovyDoom).
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