Deadliest Prey

Rather than a proper sequel, Deadliest Prey is both a remake of and an adoring tribute to the legendary trash flick Deadly Prey. More than two decades after its initial release, the classic bumbling opus by the undiscerning autodidact David A. Prior and his steroid-guzzling brother Ted Prior is now considered to be a cult artifact. Furthermore, the generation of his admirers who discovered him on VHS as teenagers is now of productive age, enabling David to fully fund his adolescent obsessions. Thanks to those admirers, the Prior brothers willingly returned to their greatest and – let’s be honest – only famous title and they set out to exploit their revived fame in the spirit of Stallone’s The Expendables. The original Deadly Prey was made basically as an enthusiasts’ project by a group of friends, which incidentally received backing from the trash factory Action International Pictures, and the new film is also the equivalent of a community-theatre production made by the original group in collaboration with their admirers for all of the ardent fans of Deadly Prey. If we leave aside the passages with the honorary roles for the enthusiast producers (A. Wade Miller and Fabio Soldani) and the group of film nerds who were instrumental in reviving or rather for establishing the cult of the Priors (Dimitri Simakis of Everything is Terrible! and Zack Carlson of the Alamo cinema), the film is composed exclusively of passages that copy, paraphrase or reference identical sequences in the original film. At its core, Deadliest Prey is thus an attempt to step into the same river a second time, which on the one hand simply gives fans exactly what they want, but at the same time we can also caustically observe it as evidence of the fact that David A. Prior has not in any way advanced in his creative career. He continues to shoot films using the disarming absolute frame technique, where the characters see nothing beyond the boundary of the camera shot, so we again enjoy a number of shots that should have ended a second or two earlier instead of just leaving the actors blankly staring into space after saying their lines. Of course, the main attraction is the return of the old ensemble, particularly Ted Prior, who at least looks relatively good for his age despite having lost his iconic mullet, though unfortunately also David Campbell, who has severe motoric problems and on whom alcohol has taken an obvious toll, and even Fritz Matthews appears as the killer Thornton, who seems to have gained two hundred kilos. In addition to the spectacular entertainment at the expense of the creators in terms of amateur acting, dismal craftsmanship, blatantly edited-in effects, would-be tough-guy lines and, of course, loads of satisfying allusions to the iconic moments of Deadly Prey, the Priors’  comeback is surprising with several moments of unintended self-reflection. The most telling of these is the scene in which Danton tells his son that he’s sorry that he dragged him into his problems, whereas in real life, this is what the worn-out Ted Prior says to his real son, who, together with his uncle David, was forced to participate in another chapter in the curse of the Prior family as mercilessly ridiculed bunglers who are condemned to eternally run around in the woods and play soldiers with replica rifles. (23.04.2014) (vähemmän) (lisää)