Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (*)
Starring: Reiko Alyesworth
Seen: January 4th 2008
* Out of ****
As you would expect from a teenager marketed shock-violence schlock film, there is not much to go by regarding story or sensibility, but that’s not the issue, since this sort of film does not need it all that much (but who decides?). A bunch of teenagers will go to see it for a couple of quick scares. And since this one’s restriction is higher than its predecessor, another bunch of teenagers will lie, cheat and steal their way into the cinemas. This in itself wouldn’t make much sense, since said teenagers would not have the memories necessary to tap even fleeting nostalgic enjoyment from this film. The true fans of the Alien and Predator franchises will probably also not like this – it’s just not good…
I now make note of a writing convention for this review, Alien with a capital A is the creature from the Sigourney Weaver movies. Just the word alien will serve as collective for both the Aliens and Predators, the non-humans. We start of with some special effects – Aliens, Predators, and Predaliens (I kid you not, this is the bastardised aliens) fight on board the ship that we left at the end of the first film. The ship gets damaged and it crashes. On earth… Aren’t we the lucky ones? Now innocent people start dying at an alarming rate, and guess what? We’ve seen all this bloodiness before. The crashed ship sends a distress signal which brings yet another Predator to earth, and he starts erasing the evidence bit by bit using “alien technology”.
Now there are some longer-lasting humanoid characters in the film, but they look like they’re acting in a b-grade TV-movie with the plot of a thousand previous films, someone is bullied, he likes the girl, she doesn’t want to acknowledge it in front of the bullies, his brother comes along and they (the two brothers, logically) end up in the sewers and hear a noise (OK, so this doesn’t happen in all of them, I just couldn’t stop there)… And yes, they go to investigate, like we all do, always.
Then after a couple more human killings by either Aliens or Predators, the Aliens and Predators go at it again, in a power plant, causing a town-wide blackout, and giving us scary darkness for the rest of the film. Now the Aliens kill a few more humans, the army arrives and get killed, and the kids go on fighting like true army veterans. The fighting continues, but any story is long since deceased. There’s a government plot in here too – sacrifice everyone rather than let the evil aliens loose. And so it goes on…
Needless to say – the ending sets up yet another sequel, but the audience does not demand it.
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