Having written and directed 1986 horror classic Night of the Creeps, Fred Dekker teamed up with Shane Black the following year to give us enjoyable kids monster movie The Monster Squad. Black would go on to write action classics Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, and The Long Kiss Goodnight. With these guys behind this reboot of the Predator franchise, I figured fans were in for a real treat.

How could I be so wrong? The Predator is an insult to the brilliant Arnie original and easily the worst film in the series so far (and quite possibly the worst mainstream movie I have seen this decade). The film starts off bad, and goes downhill from there.

Fashion model Boyd Holbrook is the star, playing decorated sniper Quinn McKenna, who witnesses the crash-landing of a predator spacecraft. The authorities hush up the incident, capturing McKenna and labelling him as mentally unstable. However, before he is apprehended, the soldier manages to send proof of the predator's existence - the alien's mask and gauntlet - to his autistic son Rory (Jacob Tremblay). As McKenna is shipped off to a secure facility in the company of several other 'crazies', the predator escapes from the lab where scientists have been studying it, and goes in search of its missing equipment...

So what's so bad about this film, I hear you ask? How long have you got?

Not only do we get a pretty boy protagonist, there's the now obligatory feisty female (Olivia Munn as boffin Casey Brackett),that irritating kid (whose autism allows him to operate the alien tech),a comedy relief character with Tourettes (how funny!),and a CGI super predator with his digital space-dogs. Instead of testosterone fuelled action and tense sci-fi horror, the terrible script prefers to play the whole thing for laughs, but it simply isn't funny. Oh, and there's CGI blood. To be honest, it's hard to pick the worst thing about the film - there's simply so much to choose from - but the accidentally lobotomised predator dog that likes to play fetch has to be a contender, as well as the ridiculous scene that sees McKenna and friends standing on the hull of the predator ship as it tries to leave Earth.

About the only positive to come out of this mess is that, when they make the next inevitable film (after a reasonable gap, so that people will forget how bad this was),the only way is up.

I guess the main question is why. Why did they make this sequel? Why was the story so bad? Why were the characters so bad? Why did they take a classic movie and dump on it? More importantly, why did I watch it?

Everyone believes they need to put a new spin on things as though movies need an upgrade. Shame on you Shane Black. Yeah, you added more flash, more bang, more action, more everything but it lacked other more important things: quality, character, uniqueness.

They tried to incorporate too many characters, too many fields of expertise, and too many variations of the original. It just ended up being a dismemberment orgy of red and green blood with tons of one-liners, quips, and inept government henchmen. It was terrible.

In an attempt to be bigger, badder, better it came off as a cheap cash grab trying to profit off of the sacred name of a legend. I watched. I didn't pay but I watched. I knew better but I thought just maybe... A guy can wish can't he?

The 'Predator' film series is a mixed bag, with the best being the 1987 film (a great film on its own) and its follow-up, the only great ones from personal opinion. Was actually really intrigued into seeing 'The Predator', despite hearing numerous bad things about it, and saw it anyway with an open mind. Just to make that clear in answer to the condescending accusations made by those defending the film without taking into account that those who didn't did see the film and simply didn't like it legitimately.

Can totally see why many were disappointed and share a lot of the criticisms directed against it. Didn't think it was that bad and it had its moments and decent assets, a 1-star film 'The Predator' isn't. Although towards the weaker end ranking films from 2018 seen, it is not one of the worst, being better than 'The First Purge' and 'Slender Man'. It's not a good film, hugely disappointing in fact, and has a lot of issues. As a Predator film 'The Predator' is a disgrace, but as a standalone film judged on its own terms it also doesn't work.

Before getting on to the faults, 'The Predator' has good points. It looks good, very slick and atmospheric with some of the effects being great and imposing.

At times, the action is fun and edge of your seat, contributing to the occasional glimpses of tension and excitement lacking elsewhere, with cohesive choreography and spectacular stunts. The film also begins promisingly, zippy in pace and quite thrilling.

When it comes to the predator, it is scary and imposing enough, as are the other creatures and their methods, and the gore does disturb and doesn't feel too gratuitous.

However, Shane Black's direction is constantly wayward and fails to generate much momentum, personality or clarity of storytelling. The character chemistry is not very natural and excepting perhaps Jacob Tremblay the acting doesn't seem very engaged or at ease. The characters are sketchy in development, are very difficult to get behind and their credibility is zero. There is effort to develop them, but through very clumsily written, superficially soap-operatic and blatant exposition that doesn't always feel necessary, adding nothing to the story or characters and failing to intrigue.

On top of that, the story, as well as being slight and at times sluggish, is far too complicated and busy which makes some of the film very hard to follow and at worst incoherent. There is lots of chaos and noise on the surface but no brains or soul underneath, while there is very little tension, suspense or surprises, relying on the action to make the film watchable which it marginally does. The atmosphere generally is bland and doesn't evoke enough scares, not enough to bite the nails anyhow. Nothing memorable about the music and the basic concept doesn't feel that much evolved, having not enough freshness, and it is too forgetful of what made the franchise at its best so great and too cheesy and bland to be a tribute or throwback.

It is the script that comes off the worst and nearly single-handedly brings 'The Predator' down, bad enough to warrant its own paragraph. It is far too talky in the exposition, it rambles often pointlessly and sometimes with not much cohesion, plausibility is as non-existent as the credibility, there is excessive sentimentality in spots and muddled moments and worst of all the over-reliance of humour. Next to none of the humour works which is a massive problem, it is eye-rollingly cheesy and not placed or timed very well too often, also being repetitive and distastefully vulgar.

Overall, not awful but mediocre. 4/10 Bethany Cox