For Ryan Phillippe, starring in “Prey” as potential dinner for lions or hungry hyenas is an ideal set-up for this African-set thriller.

“I liked how relevant, how simple the idea was where anyone can put themselves in that position or place: Imagining that you were on a plane that went down in a reserve for big game?

“That alone is terrifying,” Phillippe (pronounced Fill-a-pea), 49, said in a Zoom interview earlier this week. “I’ve always liked survival movies and ‘Prey’ really strips a human being down to their bare essence in some regards.”

Phillipe has come to Africa’s Kalahari region to support his Christian missionary wife (Mena Suvari). Warned that a Boko Haram-style terrorist group plans to kidnap them, the couple flee in Emile Hirsch’s single engine plane which all too soon crashes in a restricted game reserve. How long can they survive, without weapons or even flares?

“There is a slight theological thread through this, of questioning God. Wondering why things happen to certain people,” Phillippe said. “They’re just good people trying to do a good thing in Africa in these villages and help others. Then something like this befalls them.

“It makes them question. ‘What’s going on here? Is it worth being good? Who’s looking out for me?’ These aspects — Man’s search for meaning or search for God — really appealed to me.”

Because the couple are suddenly reduced to the elemental question of, ‘Will I live or die?’ the two actors “had discussions along with the director Mukunda (Michael Dweil) about what our backstory might have been.

“She’s the missionary, my character’s a doctor. I think that at some point in my character’s life, he was on a bad path. And once he met her, she turned his life around, maybe made him a more spiritual man.

“Being a missionary in this part of the world was at her instigation; he went along with it because of the effect she’s had on his life.

“Throughout this movie, certainly in terms of Mena’s character, there’s also the thread of the idea of sacrifice.”

As sun sets and lions come out to feed, “He’s testing God in some regards, seeing what will play out. As a doctor whose whole aim is to save lives, we see in the beginning that he’s lost a child because he doesn’t have the proper medical supplies.

“He says, ‘I could have saved that kid if I just had a little plastic stent.’ Then other (not-good) things have happened. So he sits under a tree and says, ‘I’m done. I’m going to sit here and whatever happens happens.’”

“Prey” is available on VOD