Spiritual sequels aren’t direct continuations of their predecessors, but when you watch one, it’ll be pretty easy to spot what universe it fits in.
Prey has been getting a lot of acclaim for its simple but effective story, but taking a single look at its antagonist tells anyone where the protagonist Naru’s story is going from here. Prey is a spiritual sequel to Predator and Predator 2, ignoring all other movies in the franchise and barely referencing them. It is the clearest example of a spiritual sequel: clearly its own independent movie, and at the same time a continuation of an existing story.
If It Bleeds, We Can Kill It
Prey makes two direct references to its chronological successors.
“If it bleeds, we can kill it.” is a line said by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch in the original Predator. In Prey it’s more of a sigh of relief than a rallying cry. Taabe says it to Naru while tied to a tree and watching other characters fight off the Predator. In a worse movie, the line would’ve been delivered for the same reasons as the original.
The other is the defeat of the Predators. Both final fights take place in bogs, with the protagonists covering themselves in mud and dirt to avoid revealing their heat signatures.
However, the spiritual sequel defines itself once again through altering the formula. Dutch fought the Predator using his sheer size and strength, cutting it down with a military knife. On the other hand, Naru relies on stealth and trickery to pull it down into the bog and shoot it with its own bow. Prey takes advantage of the fact that all the characters involved are a different type of hunter, using their individual skillsets to quite literally hunt and kill the Predator instead of simply attempting to survive it.
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Scream (2022) is another one of my favorite spiritual sequels. It’s obvious that it’s part of the Scream franchise, but it doesn’t number itself as one of the typical sequels. Like Prey, this film has already separated itself from the others just by its name. The story follows a completely different set of characters, and for the entire first act of the film it looks like they’re not even going to show up. A new Ghostface killer appears, scaring his victims using more modern methods to reach their locations and manipulate them.
Scream makes its protagonists and antagonists both aware of horror tropes from the very beginning, as the characters represent different archetypes of movie fans. It even makes the events of the previous films canon to this one. Scream is a continuation of the franchise, a meta-commentary and an original horror film all in one. In every Scream movie, the killer is part of the group of teens. These protagonists know that because the events of those movies have been made into books. The movie is a
When the killings start, they decide to call the “experts.” Two previous characters come back, but have clearly gone on with their lives because the original franchise is done. Their stories are complete. They’re quite literally being forced back into action, and one of the previous protagonists even pays for it with his life. That’s a move that even well-written sequels or spiritual sequels don’t often go for.
