Movie Review: Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
Alien vs. Predator made my worst list in 2004, and the sequel, coming in just a week before 2007 closes, just might have made room for itself this year. Harkening back to an old review of mine of the original AVP, I’m stunned how much that review could fill in for this one. I just find it amazing that franchises as high-profile as Alien and Predator combined to be cheap straight-to-video-quality flicks.
In Requiem, we begin with where the last one left us, with the possibility of an alien/predator hybrid. And this hybrid goes and kills a bunch of predators on their ship and then steals away to Earth. This is bad news for a man and his son hunting in the woods, where they get face-hugged and have aliens rip out of their chests soon after.
La-di-da, now some subplots: Ricky (Johnny Lewis) delivers pizzas and is in love with Jesse (Kristen Hager), who has an asshole boyfriend named Dale (David Paetkau). After delivering a pizza to her house, Dale beats up Ricky and throws his keys in the sewer. Also, we have Kelly (Reiko Aylesworth), a soldier coming back from Iraq to her husband (Sam Trammell) and daughter (Ariel Gade), and daughter is a little scared to tell mommy that she missed her. And we have Sheriff Morales (American Gangster’s John Ortiz) and Ricky’s brother Dallas (Steven Pasquale) as the go-to guys in town.
And then these characters have to deal with aliens, a predator, and a hybrid at various and random points in the film. The predator is trying to track down the hybrid abomination and destroy all evidence of it, but it won’t mind killing a few people, too.
But really nothing matters as far as “character development” or story is concerned. This is just lots and lots of random, darkly lit battles between creatures that look very much the same in dimly-lit close-up. The hybrid, which should be a really cool aspect of the film, is rarely ever shown in its full glory, quite possibly because no one on the effects team was able to make anything worth a damn.
There’s no suspense, and it has terrible dialogue and confusing action scenes. It’s poor in every aspect. Every aspect.
Comments
Comment from The Projectionist
Time: December 28, 2007, 2:50 am
You know…if you could see the costumes…they might have been pretty badass.
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Comment from KW
Time: December 27, 2007, 10:42 pm
Weren’t the costumes at least any good?