Prey (2011)

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Hunters become the hunted when they head out into the woods to track down a beast that has been killing the local deer population. A family who own a once successful pesticide company soon realise that it may very well be the side-effects of one of their chemicals that has led to the emergence of giant mutant wild boars. Prey is another film which makes up part of the cycle of French horror movies which have invigorated the genre since the new millennium. This one goes down a less expected creature-feature route, with the fairly routine idea of a man-made natural disaster being the root cause of the rampaging monsters. There is a fine balance between the family drama and creature feature horror here, with the characters creating as much threat to one and other as the giant pigs. The result is a fairly standard bit of horror in all honesty. This is a sub-genre which is quite well-worn and there isn't anything particularly new brought to the table with this one. That said, it is still a decent enough entry if you like this sort of thing.

I expected a little more from this horror movie. I never miss a french one, never. This feature is actually half drama, half horror, with a subplot between the characters I did not expect in such a film. But this is not uninteresting at all, on the contrary. It gives something more to the movie, and the characters are more involved in the story than in a usual horror flick. This topic reminds me of course Russel Mulcahy's RAZORBACK and also John Frankenheimler's PROPHECY, where we see the dangerous "side effects" that some criminal chemical industries can make to the surrounding wild life and country side.Just one thing: there are some lengths and so so sequences you have seen a billion times before in other movies. I won't say it's boring but...HmmmThe ending is OK, very "french" and far from the so predictable American ones...

I watch this movie on Netflick while visiting family in New York. First of all the whole movie was subtitled as this is a foreign film that was never dubbed (at least not for Netflix). The plot isn't too complex. A family comes together for a gathering at the father's home. Claire (the daughter) is running the pesticide business for the family and business has been doing poorly as the competition has improved their formula. Her father tells her on the phone that she needs to get back to the labs and come up with a new formula that can compete, as she had done in the past. Claire is pregnant and her husband Nathan is their to share the good new to the father. The day everyone is suppose to meet, Claire's brother and father are discussing business out side as they walk along the wire fenced landscape. All of a sudden, deer run into the wired wall and kill themselves trying to get through the wired fencing. The brother Nicolas decides he wants to find out what's scaring the deer. He asks Nathan if he'll come, but Nathan isn't a hunter and he wants to wait for Claire & her mother to come home.When Nicholas & his father discover crazy wild boar are causing the ruckus, they go back to the house to get more weapons and ammo. This time Nathan decides to go along with David. What happens next is all out war as the boar chases the men throughout the fields, up trees, into ditches and through fences as they try to kill the crazed boars before they kill them.Now, I didn't follow the story too well do to my daughter running around in front of me and screaming every time a loud sound occurred on the scream. What I did find out is pesticides Claire tested was being dumped in the small river and lakes near by. This was affecting the boars and making them go crazy. There is a lot of blood, guts, tension, drama and twists in this movie. Character development was terrible though, so you really won't care who gets killed. You'll root for Nathan, but care less about the other characters The end left me scratching my head. If you can watch this on Netflix, go for it. It's a short film at only 84 mins. It's far from perfect, but like the movie High Tension, it's worth at least one viewing. Don't waste your money buying it though. It's not that good. I wish the ending was better though. Check it out.

I know this film has received quite a bit of press and discussion on the Wildside forums but for some reason I was at a loss for what this film was about when I first rented it. As it progressed, I got the picture rather quick as Prey doesn't take long at all to jump into the thick of things. It's no surprise (or spoiler) that Prey's killer pigs aren't normal but I probably should warn creature feature fans that these particular piggies aren't of the deformed variety. They do, however, appear to be real deal FX creations (which they reveal sparingly) instead of CG though and that really helped me remain within the film.The actors all performed admirably but their characters were, in my opinion, rather bland and lacked personality. Not only did they come off flat but their motivations will be disappointingly apparent to astute viewers, leading to a predictability that siphons away some of the impact of the finale. I found myself losing interest in the fates of the characters, even the remotely likable ones, of which there weren't many. There's certainly more than enough tension to hold your attention though and it never lets up, not even for a minute.Prey is a decent thriller with some gruesome sequences of woodland carnage but it's nothing I could see myself watching again or even purchasing for my personal collection. When it comes to killer pig flicks, it is infinitely superior exercise in suspense than a film like Pig Hunt, which was completely gonzo, but the ecological disaster concept is stale and the entire film lacks replay value for me. Still…not a bad film so give it a shot, you may enjoy it.