Every slasher movie promises two things: blood and bad decisions. The Prey delivers the latter in abundance but makes you wait over an hour for even a hint of the former. By then, you’ve lost the will to live and started rooting for the disfigured killer to put you out of your misery.
Directed by Edwin Brown—previously known for producing a softcore flick called Human Experiments—The Prey is what happens when a porn director decides to make a horror film but forgets that audiences don’t want lingering shots of tree bark when they came for murder.
A Killer Backstory, Buried Alive
The movie opens in 1948 with a wildfire ripping through a secluded community of “gypsies” living in caves. Yes, caves. Because nothing says “representation” like reducing an entire people to The Flintstones. Out of this fire comes one disfigured boy, destined to become a grown-up lumbering maniac with claws sharper than Edward Scissorhands on steroids.
Fast forward to 1980. A bunch of couples decide to hike through the same area, which is now cursed. Not cursed in the supernatural sense—just cursed in that this movie takes place there.
The True Horror: The Editing
Brown seems to think his audience paid to see National Geographic: Rocky Mountains Edition. Whole chunks of the movie are devoted to wildlife footage. Frogs hopping. Snakes slithering. Birds staring blankly at the camera. At one point, we watch ants crawl across a log for so long I started wondering if the insects were the actual stars.
Slasher films usually cut to the chase. This one cuts to nature. You’ll get ten seconds of campers saying something forgettable, then three minutes of squirrels wrestling over an acorn. By the halfway mark, I started cheering for the animals. They showed more personality than any human in this film.
The Campers: Meat Without Flavor
We’ve got three couples:
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Nancy and Joel: She’s bland, he’s equally bland. Together they are the cinematic equivalent of unsalted crackers.
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Bobbie and Skip: She sunbathes, he rappels. That’s it. That’s their depth.
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Greg and Gail: They vanish early, which is merciful.
The dialogue is so sparse you wonder if the script was written on a napkin. What little they do say sounds improvised by people who’d rather be literally anywhere else.
Example: one camper finds blood smeared on a tree. “Probably an animal,” she shrugs. Yes, because deer famously rub arterial spray into bark as part of their mating rituals.
The Ranger and the Ancient Gypsy Curse
Enter Mark, the forest ranger. He’s played by Jackson Bostwick, whose performance is as stiff as the rifle he carries. His boss, Lester Tile (Jackie Coogan, in his final role), tells him the local campfire story: a burned gypsy boy now lurks in the woods, killing anyone dumb enough to hike there.
That’s it. That’s the whole setup. Imagine a version of The Hills Have Eyes without the tension, suspense, or energy—and filmed like a PSA about fire safety.
The Kill Scenes: Delayed Gratification (Emphasis on Delayed)
For an hour, nothing happens. And I don’t mean “low tension buildup.” I mean literally nothing. Hikers hike. Rangers talk. Wildlife footage continues to roll like the director lost his script and thought he was filming Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.
Finally, around the 70-minute mark, we get deaths:
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One girl is smothered with her sleeping bag. Riveting stuff. Nothing says terror like watching polyester slowly wrinkle.
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A guy rappelling gets his rope cut and falls. Gravity kills him more effectively than the monster.
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Another poor camper stumbles into a tree trap and gets thrashed like a rag doll. At least this one has some energy—if you don’t mind laughing instead of gasping.
The killer himself (played by the towering Carel Struycken, later of The Addams Family) looks like a cross between the Toxic Avenger and a baked potato. His claws are sharp, but his pacing is glacial. Every attack plays like it was rehearsed in slow motion, leaving you plenty of time to think, “I could’ve left this screening, gotten popcorn, and still come back before the victim died.”
Romance in the Woods…?
For reasons never explained, the killer seems to spare Nancy at the end. Instead of murdering her, he reaches out gently, almost tenderly. Cut to months later, and we hear the cry of an infant in a cave—suggesting Nancy and the monster had a baby.
Yes, you read that right. The final horror isn’t just that everyone else died pointlessly. It’s that we’re expected to believe Nancy and a claw-handed, potato-faced forest mutant had a romantic interlude between murders. I’ve seen fanfiction with more plausible relationships.
Jackie Coogan’s Last Hurrah
Poor Jackie Coogan. Once famous as Uncle Fester in The Addams Family, this was his last credited film before his death. His big scene involves him telling the backstory with the weariness of a man who knows he’s cashing his final paycheck. The real tragedy isn’t the killer in the woods—it’s watching a once-iconic actor go out on such a whimper.
Nature Documentary Masquerading as Horror
Some critics have tried to defend The Prey by saying its slow, meditative pace makes it unique. Sure, if “unique” means “boring.” Watching owls hoot for five straight minutes isn’t suspense. It’s filler. This is the only slasher film where I was more invested in the mating habits of squirrels than the survival of the human cast.
The editing is so indulgent you could cut an hour out and not lose a single plot point. And honestly? The wildlife footage might’ve made a better standalone documentary. At least the animals weren’t reading bad dialogue.
Final Verdict: A Fire Hazard
The Prey is proof that not every movie deserves a Blu-ray restoration. It’s a slasher film where the slash comes in at the last possible minute, buried under footage of deer grazing. It wastes its actors, drags its feet, and ends with a monster-baby romance subplot that makes The Human Centipede look tasteful.
Horror fans deserve better than this. If you want a movie about campers being slaughtered in the woods, go watch Friday the 13th. If you want nature footage, watch PBS. If you want both mashed together into an unholy mess? Then by all means, suffer through The Prey.
Grade: F
The real prey here isn’t the campers. It’s you, the audience. And the killer isn’t the monster in the woods—it’s boredom.
