Prey – Toronto After Dark 2018

A zoo veterinarian, her news cameraman boyfriend, and a British hunter try to stop a lion terrorizing Amsterdam in Prey. Lizzy (Sophie van Winden) is a veterinarian at the Amsterdam Zoo, who is called in by police to consult when brutally mauled bodies are found, with the grizzly evidence pointing to a man-eating lion on the lose in Amsterdam. Lizzy calls in her one-legged hunter ex-boyfriend Jack (Mark Frost), much to the jealousy of her current beau Dave (Julian Looman), to help hunt and kill the lion before it kills again.

From Dutch director Dick Maas (Saint) comes a darkly humorous action-horror film that can aptly be described as “Jaws with Paws.” In Prey, a man-eating lion is inexplicaply on the lose in Amsterdam, leaving carnage and body parts in its path. When all efforts by the police to stop the lion fail miserably, they are forced to rely on Lizzy’s ex-boyfriend Jack, an eccentric British man in a motorized wheelchair with tank-like caterpillar tracks. At the same time, Lizzy’s current cameraman boyfriend Dave will do anything to film the lion for the news.

Prey is pretty much what you would expect from a killer lion movie, with there being many over-the-top and gory deaths. However, Prey is really elevated by a scene-stealing performance by Mark Frost, as a very eccentric hunter, whose methods add a lot of dark humor to the mix. This all results in Prey being a very entertaining film to watch.