‘Prey’ Director Dan Trachtenberg on Evolving the Predator With the Franchise’s Longtime FX Artists [Interview]

Director Dan Trachtenberg aims to take the Predator franchise back to its roots with Prey, releasing on Hulu on August 5.

The film takes place 300 years ago in the Great Plains, where the Predator lands on Earth for the first time. The new setting gave Trachtenberg room to explore the horror icon. Speaking with Bloody Disgusting ahead of the film’s release, Trachtenberg explained harkening back to the element of surprise in the 1987 original, including working with its SFX artists and the atypical film score.

“I think the thing we were the most excited about was to put in this movie what had only really been in the original Predator: surprise. The original Predator functioned uniquely to any of the sequels. We got to see it cloaked and then masked. When I first saw the movie at ten years old, I remember seeing it in its mask form, going, ‘Oh, that’s what it looks like! That’s the predator.’ And then you see it unmasked again in its final form, you go, ‘Oh no, that’s what it is.’ That was such a special formula for that movie,” the filmmaker teased of his Predator.

“By the way, it’s interesting; I’m just realizing now that it’s similar to the Alien franchise, right? We see the egg; then we see the face-hugger, and then we see the next form. Probably not accidental. I’m literally just making this realization right now as I speak to you. But that’s not in a lot of other horror films, right? That’s not the recipe in many of the others. I was really excited for our Predator in this movie also to be exciting and new, even to diehard fans of the franchise. So that when it fights in its cloaked form, we’re enjoying that. Then when you see how it looks uncloaked, it’s new and exciting and functions in a new way. When it’s unmasked, we get even another surprise, so that was a big part of not only going back 300 years, liberating us to that. But also in thinking of, well, maybe this is also from perhaps a different hemisphere of the same planet so that we could be as different as we could be while still being undeniably Predator.”

To bring his version of the Predator to life, Trachtenberg enlisted the help of SFX legends Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr., who’ve been intertwined with the franchise since 1987’s Predator. The filmmaker reveals that he very nearly didn’t bring them on board.

“Honestly, I did think before I met with Tom and Alec, I was like, ‘Maybe we should have a young new company that has never done Predator before, that would feel like they could throw down and have something to prove because I love giving people a start.’ But then I met with Tom and Alec. And they were undeniably charming, and we’ve talked a lot about what they had always felt, maybe a little handcuffed by, in previous entries in the franchise and how excited they would be to do something special with this. They are just wonderful people to be around. I’ve loved so much of their work and all the movies I’ve watched growing up that I could not help but say yes to them. I think they did go above and beyond in creating something better than anything they’ve ever done before and certainly in the Predator franchise. Even as far as just movie creatures go, it’s just an awesome movie creature.”

It’s not just with the creature that Trachtenberg strives to surprise; the epic music by composer Sarah Schachner is atypical of a horror movie and lends a unique, adventurous quality to the film.

“I’m so glad you bring this up because one of my favorite things about this movie is that we have such a beautiful score. It’s funny because we started out temping the movie with a lot of Sicario. And many of my conversations early on with Sarah were oriented toward making things atmospheric, moody, and drone-y, a lot of what is in contemporary movie scores. Then as we continued in the process, the movie started demanding that it have something different.”

“The fact that we now have, I think, a great old-fashioned epic adventure score mixed with some of the other more atmospheric things and a rehashing of the Predator theme used for the Predator itself. Which is like the Predator now sonically announcing, ‘Predator movie is coming, Predator movie is coming.’ I think it’s absolutely tremendous. I’m so glad that we evolved the way that we did. Now I have a score to a movie that, as a kid, I would be listening to over and over and over again on its own, separate from the movie.”

“I think it’s actually beautiful music,” Trachtenberg adds.