![]() As they walk through the forest, there’s a loud gunshot. Following this, there’s a short flashback to Roman (played by David Kross ) and his wife Lisa (played by Livia Matthes ) in happier times. The trip goes well until Vincent (played by Yung Ngo ) nearly falls to his death. They, however, don’t pay much attention to it. Ī group of male friends travel through a small river when as they hear faint shooting in the distance, they find a soft toy. Probably not, and seriously, that’s all I’ve got on “Prey.” Alas, Sieben has to admit the same.This article discusses the ending of the Netflix film Prey (2021), so it will contain major spoilers. Perhaps our writer-director was making satiric fun of male bonding, the myth of primal male woodland prowess and the like. When your Around the World with Netflix film puts more effort into explaining “motivations” than it does on five educated, healthy men incapable of teaming up, brainstorming or spitballing until they find an escape or counter-attack that works, that “explanation” had better justify all this. The shots keep coming, even as they halfheartedly attempt to reason their way out of this jam, or plead from afar with the motiveless, murderous shooter.įlashbacks show the “tests” Roman has faced in the relationship he’s about to consummate with marriage. There’s talk of “every man for himself,” which sounds even uglier in German. These guys have “issues.” Little is done to develop the group dynamic, just this guy needing a job, that one needing investors, Vincent just wanting it all to end and Roman wishing he was with his fiance. In Sieben’s screenwriterly mind, that’s game over. ![]() ![]() They flee into the forest without their gear, with no cell signal and little to fight back with save for a single knife and their wits. But it’s only when they try to get in their SUV and leave that the “accident” that winged Vincent stops looking like a mistake. They hear what they assume to be hunters’ rifle fire, here and there. You would be, too, if you were the first one shot. Vincent ( Yung Ngo) is the one most out of his depth, the one given to throwing up under stress and whimpering and crying when things get real. Albert ( Hanno Koffler) is the start-up entrepreneur some of them work for. Roman ( David Kross) is about to get married. Sieben (“Kidnapping Stella”) serves up a bachelor party of five, guys with little woodlore among them, riding inflatable kayaks, hiking and perhaps camping in a national park in early winter. But when Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David vowed they’d make an American sitcom whose characters lived by a “NO LEARNING” ethos, they had no idea they’d inspire some German with a Netflix deal to try it in a thriller. If you ever wondered how boring and frustrating it might be to watch the young, athletic and helpless stagger to their deaths, with little agency in their fate, Sieben’s made a movie for you. The most important figure to go into this kind of clueless and come out the same way is writer-director Thomas Sieben. That’s who wins these Darwinian Hunter Games, those who adapt.īut there’s no learning here, no scheming. ![]() Such thrillers, even the most unsurvivably supernatural among them, have the hunted and the viewer experience a learning curve. They don’t know who, and even after they do, they have no idea “why.”Īs they’re picked off and avenues for escape, “plans” to get out of this come to nothing, who will show himself capable of learning, scheming and figuring out how to fight back before they’re all dead? Five friends set off on a kayaking/camping hike into the mid-European forest. ![]() The set-up is so familiar your average 12 year-old could script it. Even allowing for the minimalism of its formula, the German “hunted in the woods” thriller “Prey” offers slim pickings for those who enjoy watching and reasoning one’s way out of the pre-ordained predicament it puts its victims and the viewer in. ![]()
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