{"id":25978,"date":"2017-08-05T00:56:20","date_gmt":"2017-08-05T04:56:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=25978"},"modified":"2020-07-29T11:07:57","modified_gmt":"2020-07-29T15:07:57","slug":"prey-prooi-2016-fantasia-international-film-festival-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/05\/prey-prooi-2016-fantasia-international-film-festival-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Prey (Prooi) (2016) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2017]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>As a lion wreaks havoc on the city of Amsterdam, a zoo veterinarian gets involved in its chase along with her boyfriend and ex.<\/p>\n

Written and directed by Dick Maas, Prey is a horror comedy film with its comedy very dark and its horror a bit light.\u00a0 The film takes the wild animal on the loose premise and moves it to the city of Amsterdam where the idea of a killer lion on the loose is particularly ludicrous.\u00a0 The way the film develops this and adds hunters, both experienced and not so much, who once paired with the local police becomes a bit of a mess in terms of lion-chasing but a fun watch in terms of horror-comedy.\u00a0 The film shows an ability to pit characters against each other in a way that is entertaining while they all face the lion threat.\u00a0 The comedy is often situational and takes advantage of the characters\u2019 flaws in a way that works well here.\u00a0 The direction is rather on point for the comedy and fairly good on the horror.\u00a0 However, as a horror film, it has just about no scare factor.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This is in part due to the lion terrorizing Amsterdam.\u00a0 It\u2019s made up of an animatronics lion and CGI depending on the scene.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the CGI is not exactly on point.\u00a0 This means that major suspension of disbelief must be done to manage to get really into the film and that some scenes just don\u2019t work when the lion is fully visible.\u00a0 Perhaps a less is more approach would have helped the film on the scare factor as the scenes with the lion stalking in the bushes or under the cover of darkness work much better than the ones where he is fully visible.\u00a0 The rest of the effects are decent and work well within the film.<\/p>\n

The cast of Prey, or Prooi in its original language, does good work here, especially considering they are sometimes running from something that was only added to their scenes after the fact.\u00a0 The standout here is Sophie van Winden as Lizzy the zoo veterinarian.\u00a0 She is the voice of reason here and plays her character very straight in terms of comedy, letting things just unfolds around here while she stays serious\u00a0 no matter how ridiculous the situation.\u00a0 Playing her current beau Dave, Julian Looman plays him with a touch of almost sleaze but not quite, he\u2019s a cheater, but a charming one and someone who Lizzy can\u2019t quite seem to not<\/em><\/strong> love.\u00a0 On the other hand, there is also Jack, her ex and an experienced lion hunter brought in for his expertise and for jokes made at his expense.\u00a0 Actor Mark Frost plays his quite well and his British demeanor fits the dark humor perfectly.\u00a0 The cast here all pretty much play their parts as straight as they can in the face of the ordeal and insanity.\u00a0 This creates a good basis for the dark and oftentimes dry humor of the film as well as the somewhat scares involving the rampaging lion.<\/p>\n

Prey is a decent horror-comedy that is fun to watch although it does require a certain level of suspense of disbelief as the lion doesn\u2019t quite look scary at all.\u00a0 The humor hits mostly throughout, with a few jokes falling flat due to being insensitive in some case and just not all that funny in others.\u00a0 Overall, it\u2019s a fun horror-comedy with some truly outrageous scenes and some set-ups that wouldn\u2019t make any sense in anyone else\u2019s hands than Dick Maas\u2019.<\/p>\n

Fantasia International Film Festival ran from July 13th to August 2nd.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a lion wreaks havoc on the city of Amsterdam, a zoo veterinarian gets involved in its chase along with her boyfriend and ex. Written and directed by Dick Maas, Prey is a horror comedy film with its comedy very dark and its horror a bit light.\u00a0 The film takes the wild animal on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2497,1284,12],"tags":[219,259,367,477,711,1087],"class_list":["post-25978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasia-fest","category-festivalsevents","category-movie-reviews","tag-comedy","tag-dark-comedy","tag-foreign","tag-horror","tag-nature-run-amok","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25978"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25980,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25978\/revisions\/25980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}