The Prey is a Cambodian action film that follows an undercover Chinese cop, Xin (Gu Shangwei), who is on a mission that sends him to Cambodia, where a sudden police raid results in him being imprisoned under a ruthless warden (Vithaya Pansringarm). Things taken a turn for the worse when Xin becomes selected among several other prisoners to be taken by a group of men who made a deal with the warden. It turns out the prisoners are meant to be hunted in the Cambodian wilderness by rich hunters, The Most Dangerous Game style, forcing Xin to fight for survival.
The film is directed by Jimmy Henderson (who also co-wrote it with Michael Hodgson and Kai Miller), an Italian filmmaker who – in a trajectory not all that dissimilar to that of Welsh filmmaker Gareth Evans – found his calling in the Cambodian film industry, which after years of working and finding his footing, resulted in his big festival hit, Jailbreak, back in 2017. For those who haven’t seen it, Jailbreak is a very enjoyable action film that delivers exactly what is promises, in a contained and propulsive manner, and it marked quite a bit of promise for not only its filmmaker but also the industry that he has found a home in.
Sitting at a little over 90 minutes, Henderson has the film set up in three clear sections. The first half hour sets up Xin, and the shady practices of the prison as helmed by its warden. The middle portion is a full on chase, where many prisoners are initially wiped out, leading only a few left behind running deep into the jungle. I like how very early on in this, Xin can’t help but save a fellow prisoner played by Rous Mony, who has up until that point been very antagonistic towards Xin. And the two spend much of the rest of the film surviving together, and thankfully without much need to add unnecessary drama between them.
While that middle portion is largely spent with our hero being chased by men with guns, the film does eventually indulge in some fancy fisticuffs by the time we get to the last half hour. The hand-to-hand choreography is appropriately raw and sloppy, reeking of desperation. There’s a consistent sense of dread and danger, and Henderson does a good job at holding tension for extended periods of time before exploding into acts of violence.
With the film placing most of its focus on visceral thrills, it does resist putting too much complication when it comes to exploring the characters. We only come to know about these people through the little bits of dialogue and exposition that we get, and it’s not that much. Though it may result in some thin characterization, I found it to be enough to latch onto these characters, and the actors all put in solid work. Gu Shangwei is a capable leading man who brings a grounded physicality to the action. One actor who grew on me was Nophand Boonyai, who plays Ti, a newcomer to the hunt, who is revealed to be more disturbed and sadistic than initially presumed.
The Prey doesn’t necessarily break a whole lot of new ground, both as an action movie and as a riff on The Most Dangerous Game. It’s a premise we’ve seen many times before, but it’s a very reliable formula. Jimmy Henderson takes a fairly modest approach to the material, honing in on the tension that is to be mined when you are there in the middle of all the chaos with a character that is actively being hunted as opposed to some of the obvious thematic ground that other movies have explored with this premise, such as The Hunt earlier this year. The Prey works because it knows not to reach beyond its grasp, instead keeping things lean and mean, relying the skills of a talented cast and the craft behind its brutal action sequences.
The Prey is now out in virtual cinemas and VOD platforms.