Human hunting movies seem to be the thing right now. Early this year there was the controversial American film The Hunt that disappeared onto Netflix in the blink of an eye for political reasons. Then came Bacurau, a strange dystopian class struggle Western set in Brazil. And now we have an action movie from Cambodia that takes us down the same road. This time the wealthy elite are hunting a group of prisoners plucked from a jail run by a sadistic warden (Vithaya Pansringarm). But one of those prisoners Xin (Gu Shangwei) is a Chinese Interpol agent who was caught up in an undercover operation. It’s no surprise that he’s got more survival skills than the rest of the prey. What follows is just as you’d expect, a cat and mouse game punctuated by martial arts fight scenes and gun play. There’s not much in the way of character development, but then that’s par for the course with action films, isn’t it?
The rich bad guys with guns pay the warden big bucks for the thrill of a human hunt. One of them is a young rich kid who it turns out has some serious mental issues. The others are just elite psychos. Xin escapes the initial run for your life slaughter along with the one guy from prison who speaks Chinese. How lucky for him! And when the hunt doesn’t go as planned, i.e. the hunters start getting killed by the prey, the warden comes in with his big guns to fix things, and you know it’s not going to go his way.
The Prey is a pretty standard issue action flick. Not great. Not bad. If you’re into the genre, you’ll be entertained, though you probably won’t remember it by next year.
In Chinese and Cambodian with subtitles. In virtual theaters beginning August 21st. And streaming on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Xbox, Vudu, Direct TV, Dish Network and all major cable providers August 25th.