Matisse van Rossum’s review published on Letterboxd:
Despite my general aversion to action films (as stated in my Die Hard review), I loved Predator. This is most likely due to the fact that this is just as much a creature film as it is an action film, and I love creature films like you wouldn't believe. And this is one of the best. Most people always compare Predator to Alien, for the sole reason that Alien vs. Predator is thing, and that aggravates me, because they're such different films that I don't believe you can fairly compare them at all. The only thing that they have in common is a great creature design.
The Predator is one of the absolute coolest movie monsters ever, because it's so rare that you find a monster with a sense of honor and competition. And this alone makes for an almost perfect setup for a film. It's about so much more than a creature just picking off a group of bodies. It's about competition. It's about who's the more deadly and efficient killing machine. And when it's Arnold Schwarzenegger that the monster is going up against, it's a way more even battle than you would expect. The title doesn't even necessarily refer to the monster, because by the end of the film, Arnold has become the real predator. The story is as basic as it gets, the script is bad, and the characters have absolutely zero depth, but the action and suspense are so effective and so much fun that its flaws are easily excusable.
When you consider when this film was made, the computer effects are surprisingly good. They wouldn't stand up to today's standards, but for the time, they were excellent. In context, the Predator's cloaking device is executed pretty effectively, as are the bolts from its shoulder cannon and its thermal vision. On a different note, the makeup and creature effects are still great, even today. I will always prefer the mask Predator over the CGI Predator, no contest. You just can't beat good practical effects (James Cameron, I'm talking to you) and if it's not broken, you shouldn't try to fix it.
And Christ, does John McTiernan know his way around some one-liners (once again refer to my Die Hard review). The rest of the script can be terrible (which it is), but it's impossible to not love good one-liners. Especially when they're spat out by some of the most hilarious beefcake soldier characters in film history. And the actors playing these beefcake soldiers are perfect. Arnie, Carl Weathers, Jesse Ventura, Shane Black... how can you go wrong? The answer is you can't. Predator is an awesome movie. Period.