Think of Predator: Killer of Killers, now streaming on Hulu, is an aperitif for the upcoming live-action Predator: Badlands. But it’s also its own very satisfying meal. Working with director Joshua Wassung and screenwriter Micho Robert Rutare, Prey filmmaker Dan Tratchenberg extends his command of the Predator Universe with an animated story full of Preds on Earth, Preds in Space, and the human warriors these legendary fight-coded creatures meet along the way. For as the lore goes in these parts, it was dictated they would. “Go forth among the stars, and seek only the strongest prey,” a prophecy of the Yautja culture reads out in the familiar geometric red “Pred” typeface. “They shall be your trophy. Become the Killer of Killers…”
The Gist: You know who didn’t hear about becoming any kind of trophy? Ursa (Lindsay LaVanchy), a Viking queen. In 841 CE, she leads her young son Anders (Damien Haas) and a band of warriors against the fortress of a rival chief. Ursa is a terror with her two battle shields, and severed heads and bloody limbs soon litter the snow where she walks. But Ursa’s fierceness has drawn a different kind of warrior close. We saw the spaceship arriving; we recognized the point-of-view, seen through thermal imaging. The trademark active camouflage is in full effect. A Predator has arrived on Earth, one with a pulse weapon gauntlet attachment. And the cold and icy waters of ninth century Scandinavia will become Ursa’s best weapon in her fight with this new adversary.
In feudal Japan, brothers Kenji and Kiyoshi (both voiced by Louis Ozawa) are bonded in tradition and competition, and an ethos that feels almost sacred. But when a warrior with its own code appears on the scene, whatever disagreements the Kamakamis have had over the years are put aside. They’ll need teamwork and ingenuity to fight this Predator effectively.
“Hooks in the sky!” It’s 1942, and an American aircraft carrier in the Atlantic is suddenly at war with more than the Vichy French air force. A Predator is there, this one flying around in a Yautja gunship with a boomeranging chain-claw attachment, and it’s up to scrappy US Navy pilot Johnny Torres (Rick Gonzalez) to lead a bunch of F4F Wildcats against this intergalactic warrior threat. If he can use the Pred’s predilection for seeing only heat against it, then maybe Torres will have the advantage. Even if he does end up being fitted with an explosive neck collar.
The three vignettes that make up the bulk of Predator: Killer of Killers eventually coalesce around Ursa, Kenji, and Torres as unexpected teammates.The film messes with the structure of time as we know it, and plays in a fun, cool, and bloody sandbox full of canon-established facts about Preds and their tactics. (The ones our heroes encounter – on Earth or elsewhere – aren’t even the main event.) Killer of Killers has a blast expanding on the rules and regs of a Yautja culture built around fighting and conquest, and as an animated entry in the Predator Universe, it’s just as real as any of the other films, as tangible as connecting sinew between bones. “Have you killed one of the demons as well?” Kenji asks Torres. On their way to trying to not become brainstem trophies on a Pred’s mantle, the humans in Killer of Killers intrinsically understand that “Know Your Enemy” is a universal truth.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? For us, Prey was the calibration the universe of Predator films desperately needed. While that film totally rips as pure hunter-hunts-the-hunters action – you could watch and enjoy it without even caring about what connects to what – Prey also represents the exciting new baseline director Dan Tratchenberg is working with. Killer of Killers builds on that, and so will Predator: Badlands, Tratchenberg’s upcoming Elle Fanning-starring live-action standalone in the Pred-O-Verse.
And with Tratchenberg in charge, what’s even cooler is the idea of even further calibration. Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem was messy, but it was onto something. Tratchenberg incorporating Weyland-Yutani technology into the Badlands story teases a new galactic harmony between the creatures and content of these lasting sci-fi entities. And all of this is while the Alien franchise is making its own moves, like having Cailee Spaeny fight them in space and sending facehuggers to arrive on Earth.
Performance Worth Watching: Lindsay LaVanchy leans into a lot of Ursa’s best lines, like the Viking warrior heaping contempt on the Predator and its “sorceries and hell trinkets.” But we also had one of those “Who’s voice is that” moments when Killer of Killers got to its Second World War vignette. It’s the incomparable Michael Biehn as Vandy, Torres’ lieutenant commander on the flight deck.
Memorable Dialogue: How do you spell HHHHhhhkkkkhkhkhkkkkkkk? Because the first time you hear that tell-tale laryngeal gargle in Killer of Killers – oh shit, the Predator’s here – it’s appropriately terrifying. The Pred’s HHHHhhhkkkkhkhkhkkkkkkk’ng is equivalent to the Alien’s saliva dripping on whoever it’s about to pounce on next. It’s a kind of audio logo for the entire Predator universe, and it’s been with us since Dutch and his team first walked into that Central American jungle.
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: The vignette setup demands more vignettes! Watching Killer of Killers, and enjoying it immensely as-is, we kept thinking Dan Tratchenberg and his collaborators could probably add like six more sections to the film, with even more heroes beating back Predator attacks throughout human history. Which is why we enjoyed it even more once Killers started dropping in little details about how such continuations could occur. The existence of multiple Predators has been an in-universe fact since the ending of Predator 2. And the not-altogether-terrible Predators – starring The Brutalist himself, Adrien Brody – also brought us the idea of human warriors as a collection of playthings for the demands of Yautja culture. But Killers takes this concept and shapes it further, forming Ursa, Kenji, and Torres into full characters in the space of a few minutes and even making their Pred foes incredibly distinct from one another.
And helping to breathe life into this shape is the stunning animation in Killer of Killers, which combines digital sharpness with painterly close-ups. It reminded us a little of Twilight of the Gods at first – visually, beyond even the shared Viking setting – but Killers soon finds a footing all its own. As employed, the animation style is particularly adept at styling the look and feel of Predator technology as we know it, like thermal imaging, plus those Preds themselves. Glowing green blood has never looked cooler.
Our Call: STREAM IT! Predator: Killer of Killers boils down elements of sci-fi, human history, and Predator history as we know it from the films that came before. And surfacing on that rolling boil is a new kind of Pred-vs-Humankind heat, with lots of promise for the Pred-O-Verse trajectory of filmmaker Dan Tratchenberg.
Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.