Film Reviews

Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem

• Rating:
• Director: Colin Strause
• Starring: John Ortiz
• Details: USA / 86mins (16)

It all started as an in-joke in Predator 2: Danny Glover tracks the Predator back to its grounded spaceship and wanders into the 'trophy room'; those with the quickest eyes spotted an Alien husk among the collectables hung on the wall. There were rumours about a script knocking about Hollywood for years, but the video game was the first to make an appearance and it wasn't until 2004 when Alien vs. Predator was released. Despite the fact that it stunk worse than Lazarus after a ten mile jog, that didn't stop Fox from giving the green light to Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. The plot, which takes a little from the comic book Alien: Earth Angel, sees an Alien/Predator hybrid hijack a Predator ship and crash land it on Earth, right on the outskirts of Smalltown, USA. With the alien are a few face-huggers who make short work of a deer hunter and his young son. Now, with more aliens roaming about, they move towards the town where the sheriff (Ortiz) tries to figure out why everyone is disappearing. Enter a Predator with orders to clean up the mess (the Michael Clayton of Predators if you will). Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem is as bad a film as they come: cutting and pasting action sequences from different drafts, Messrs. Strause make no sense of the nothing plot and aren't able in making even a half-decent entry to a franchise that's been on its last legs since 1992. Nor do they seem interested, and going by this instalment, they not only hate the franchise, they also hate movies. There's not even a point in discussing the human element, who have even less to do than in the original. Even for die-hard fans, of which I was at some point, there's nothing here to recommend AVPR. There's not even a possibility of coming out and saying 'well, at least the fight scenes were okay' - the film is shot with the minimum of light (that's even before the town suffers a blackout) and it's really hard to make out what the hell is happening. Saying that, the next installment - Aliens vs. Predator vs. Kramer vs. Kramer - promises to be a winner.

Review by Gavin Burke