The film is your basic "Predator" type film with a confusing backstory and a lot of plot holes. Excuse me if I get something wrong. Fenix (Franziska Schissler) is set up to be the "final girl." It is pronounced like "Phoenix" and not like some pharmaceutical. The year is 2248 and Union Corp controls all the safe zones and enlists soldiers from those who live outside the city. The sun is dying and so is the Earth. In order to survive it needs "Stardust" which we see as a lump of turquoise at the end of the feature.

Now the mineral only exists in one place, the breeding place of the Dawnseeker, a human killer from Omina Prime. However, there are other alien races seeking the mineral. One of the aliens is a man named York (Alexander Kane) who speaks perfect 20th century Earth redneck. The film then jumps to 2298 as a nuclear-powered spaceship carrying a Dawnseeker crashes on a planet being mined against Galactic Law. Typical things like gravity in space are not explained as is the norm for most sci-fi films.

The back story was poorly done. It was an ill-conceived script by someone who saw "Predator" and spent a day in film making school. It appears 90% of the budget was spent on special effects used in the first 20 minutes. Once the group crashes on the planet, the bad script goes downhill.

Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity.

2248. Five people are sent on a desperate mission to a faraway planet to collect a mineral called Stardust in order to revive the dying sun and save Earth. However, there turns out to be a predatory creature on said planet who stalks and hunts the quintet.

Writer/director Justin Price relates the absorbing story at a constant pace, maintains an appropriately bleak tone throughout, stages the exciting action with considerable aplomb, and delivers a few moments of startling brutal violence. The solid acting by the capable cast keeps this movie humming: Franziska Schissler as the tough Fenix, Khu as the lethal Zan, Alexander Kane as the shifty, but hard-nosed York, Jason Skeen as the hot-tempered and unscrupulous Otto, Linton Jackson as the ill-fated Evo, Carl Bailey as the jerky Kane, and Alex Giuffreda as the scrappy Jax. The CGI effects are pretty good considering the modest budget while the guy in a rubber suit monster looks really gnarly. A cool little movie.

Right, well I didn't know what I was in for when I sat down to watch the 2018 movie titled "The Dawnseeker" aside from it being some kind of sci-fi movie. Normally I am not particularly interested in sci-fi movies, but I had the time to sit down and watch it, and since I hadn't seen it before, of course I did.

Well, this was just a blatant copy of "Predator", except it was lacking all the cool aspects that "Predator" had. Forget about Schwarzenegger and a mean extraterrestial hunter on Earth, instead you have a massive wanna-be.

Sure, the storyline was tweaked and changed, but essentially it was the same thing as "Predator", and the creature was almost a copy/paste work of the Yautja creature from "Predator", except it was arachnid in its facial design, and it was so obviously just a worn costume, because it wasn't skin-tight, nor painted on, and you could see the creases and folds when the actor moved about. It was just atrocious to watch.

I will say that the costume and props for the people in the movie was actually good, I liked the design of the costumes with the incorporated lights. And truth be told, they were actually nowhere near as low-budget or catastrophic as the alien costume in the movie. So the props department definitely deserves a thumbs up on that accomplishment.

The movie had Khu on the cast list, and she actually carried the movie well enough, despite not having a lead role. However, while her hair definitely is impressive in length, it just seems very unfitting for a movie such as this. I mean, that long hair would get in the way everywhere and constantly when working in the armed forces.

"The Dawnseeker" is a poor man's copy of "Predator", no doubt about it, and it is hard to imagine what writer and director Justin Price was thinking when he came up with this. An homage? Or just cashing in on the success of an 80s movie? I don't know.

I managed to sit through the entire movie, although I wasn't overly entertained. And I can honestly say that I will not be returning to watch "The Dawnseeker" a second time, not even Khu can manage to get me to watch it a second time.

My rating of "The Dawnseeker" is a mere three out of ten stars. The movie lacked originality and it was just a shameless rip off of "Predator" in my eyes.