Prey
What initially caught my eye about Darrell Roodt's lions gone wild flick PREY was the pic and name of Bridget Moynihan on the cover. And I really like "When Animals Attack" (Bob Urich r.i.p.) type stuff. I had heard her name before as the girl Tom Brady knocked up and left for super underwear model/whore Giselle Bundchen. It also stars former robocop and naked luncher Peter Weller. Yeah, I thought he was dead too since I hadn't seen him since the movie with the screamers that were developed for the off world colonies. I think it may be called SCREAMERS. But anyway, Pete plays an engineer who takes his exceedingly MILF-y wife, played by Bridget, to Africa with his kids from his first marriage for a little bonding work vacation. The teen daughter hates new mom Bridget but the slightly younger son is okay with it. Trust me, you could do a lot worse than having Bridget as your step-mom. While Pete works, Bridget and the kids head out for a tourist safari adventure. They have a rugged , strapping guide and are in a range rover so what could go wrong? Well, probably nothing unless you go off the road which is exactly what happens. Before you know it, the rugged guide is out of the range rover with the keys and the gun and before you can say Crikey! is promptly killed by a female lion. It's pretty traumatic for the family as he's trying to get back in the car and is drug off to be eaten. Turns out there are two female and one male lion who seem to be hanging around, waiting for the next meal.
As time drags and the situations worsens due to panic, heat and lack of water, tensions arise between Bridget and the daughter about the coarse of action. In what is the best part of the picture, the stranded family comes across two native, non-english speaking lion poachers. There are several horrible ways for this scene to go and you really can't tell how it's gonna play out. For a film pretty much contained in a range rover and the immediate area, it does a decent job of creating suspense. I suppose the most obvious film comparison would be CUJO. Weller resorts to getting the help of a grizzled old white hunter basically, a lion Quint, to search for the family but sadly we don't get a campfire story from the hunter about his ship that went down in lion infested waters. It's always easy and ultimately pointless to point out shit people in the movie don't do in order to survive, genius stuff like "why don't they hot wire the car? They are so stupid and I'm not". But really, how many of you can hot wire a car? I'm not sure I can and I'm basically a criminal. It's Moynihan's picture and I thought she was great. The lions themselves never did anything that seemed too unnatural, they just seemed hungry. It my not be the CITIZEN CANE of killer lion pictures but it was enjoyable enough and was generally a great looking little picture
