The animated anthology film Predator: Killer of Killers takes the sci-fi/horror franchise for a pleasantly brutal detour between proper live action entries. Coming between the sleeper streaming hit Prey (which should’ve gotten a major theatrical release in hindsight) and the forthcoming Predator: Badlands (which is getting a cinematic rollout later this fall), Killer of Killers serves a couple of different purposes to nice effect.
It primarily allows co-directors Dan Trachtenberg (returning from Prey and currently helming Badlands) and Joshua Wassung (a visual effects supervisor who worked on the previous Predator entry) to further evolve the style of movies built around the mythical alien big game hunter. But it also gives Trachtenberg and co-writer Micho Robert Rutare an opportunity to craft large scale epics that would be cost prohibitive if they tried to make them into stand alone live action movies. With a dazzling animation style and a lot of exciting ingenuity, Predator: Killer or Killers takes the series to new heights, and comes across more like a proper franchise entry than a stop-gap between instalments or a clearing house for half formed ideas.
Predator: Killer of Killers plunks the titular alien creatures down into three different historical periods on Earth, as they continue their quest to seek out and hunt only the strongest prey in the universe. The first section unfolds in 841 A.D., where a Viking warrior named Ursa (voiced by Lindsay LaVanchy) is waging a war in a bid to avenge the death of her father and protect her young son. Then the action shifts to feudal Japan in the early 1600s, where former childhood best friends face off after one becomes a noble Samurai and the other a cunning ninja (both voiced by Louis Ozawa). Finally, a predator shows up in the North Atlantic during World War II to take out an entire squadron of American fighter pilots, and it’s up to an eager, intuitive mechanic (Rick Gonzalez) to save the day.
Eventually these stories will all link up (even though the science behind how that happens isn’t explained and the viewer is just told to go along with it), building to a tale of elite level soldiers from different eras banding together to fight a common foe. But the main appeal lies in how Trachtenberg and company use the predators to make bad situations exponentially worse for the people caught in their crosshairs. The action in Predator: Killer of Killers is sweeping in scope and soaked in copious amounts of blood, guts, and severed limbs. The style of the animation befits the comic book and video game tendencies of the script in a positive way, and this might be one of the few examples of an animated film to put such techniques to good use without distracting the viewer.
Each chapter of Predator: Killer of Killers is given its own unique identity and tone. The icebound viking portion has a mythical, brutal quality that gets things off to a rousing start before the Japanese portion takes things in a more stylized, emotional, and virtually wordless direction. The World War II fighter pilot portion is filled with old school American blockbuster ingenuity that would be insanely hard to pull off if the filmmakers tried to make a live action adaptation. Really, the grand finale that pulls everything together feels the least inventive and novel, but Trachtenberg and company ensure that Predator: Killer of Killers remains smartly paced and entertaining.
Any one of these concepts for the predator doing battle with resourceful humans would make for a great stand alone feature, but there’s something fun about the decision to lump them together in an anthology format. Predator: Killer of Killers delivers on the ultra-violence fans have come to expect from the franchise (with a streaming release making sense here, since a Hard-R rated animated film can be a pretty tough sell these days), with carefully crafted human stories of hardship, revenge, ingenuity, and perseverance. It feels both grand and small at the same time, like picking up a few issues of a comic book and leafing through them on a lazy afternoon. The film isn’t lazy, but I’m sure you get the vibe I’m trying to convey.
Predator: Killer of Killers premiers on Disney+ in Canada and Hulu in the U.S. on Friday, June 6, 2025.
