20 Recent Horror Movies WAY Better Than Expected

Even though director Dan Trachtenberg has more than proven himself an adept steward of the Predator franchise with his films Prey and Predator: Killer of Killers, there was still some fair skepticism lingering over the release of Predator: Badlands.

And it all came down to that pesky PG-13 rating.

After all, every prior mainline Predator movie - ignoring Alien vs. Predator - has been rated R for its brutal, spine-ripping violence, and so on paper it certainly seemed like an odd, presumably studio-mandated choice to aim for a broader audience with Badlands' tamer rating.

And while Trachtenberg explained that the rating was because Badlands features no human characters at all, meaning the violence is exclusively meted out against androids and alien creatures, some still felt that a PG-13 Predator movie would feel inherently sanitised.

Though it's fair to say that Badlands does lack some of the grisly brutality of the previous films, it's ultimately still a highly entertaining and totally respectable entry into the Predator canon.

Above all else, Trachtenberg actually tries to do something different with the series here and largely succeeds, aided by strong central performances from Elle Fanning and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi.