Does anyone else remember the 2007 movie "Prey" with Bridget Moynahan? She played a stepmom who goes on a vacation with her family to an African wildlife preserve, then she and the kids get stranded and surrounded by hungry lions who keep attacking, and they have to survive? This movie gave me some serious "Prey" vibes. It was kinda like "Cujo" but with lions, where the mother figure had to protect her children from the monster. I love Idris Elba, so I was excited to see him in this movie, and I finally got to check it out today, streaming only on Peacock.
In this movie, the recently widowed Dr. Nate Daniels and his two teenage daughters go on a vacation to Africa to go to a wildlife preserve which is managed by Martin Battles, who is an old family friend and a wildlife biologist. This trip is supposed to help heal the rifts in their family caused by Nate's behavior before the mother's death, but what starts out as a joyful trip of healing suddenly turns into a nightmare. Soon Nate and his family find themselves stalked by a hungry lion. that survived poachers. Will Nate be able to protect his family from the lion in a fearsome fight for survival?
Lions are a lot like big cats. Martin Battles, the wildlife biologist, spends a lot of time in the early scenes of the movie playing with the lions like they're big cats. These are the tamer of the animals, not like the big, mean lion who ends up stalking the family later in the movie. The movie opens with a scene of the big lion chowing down on some poachers who tried to kill it, so we know it's big and it's angry. The teenage daughters in this movie do a lot more to help out than the kids in the movie Prey, who are mostly there to be put in peril to further the plot.
Apparently, when you're trapped in a truck with a killer lion roaming around wanting to eat you, past fights and issues you have had can come to the surface at the most inopportune time, and there's some bickering that goes on here between the characters while they're all trying to avoid becoming lion chow, but they manage to get past the fighting and band together in order to survive, so I was proud of them. The movie has a few surprises up its sleeve too, like a confrontation with some angry poachers and an accident with their vehicle that puts them in further danger. In the end, this becomes a morality tale about the dangers of poaching, which is a timely message in this age where poaching is still going on. I was invested the whole time in these characters and their fight for survival, so I really enjoyed this movie just as much as I enjoyed "Prey" back in the day. Remind me never to go to a wild game preserve for vacation.
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