AVPR: Aliens vs Predator - Requiem DVD

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Hated it
Story	Very weak
Characters / Performances	Unmemorable
Special Effects	Weak
How does it compare to similar films?	Weak

Advantages:	Aliens made of cardboard (and thats an advantage)
Disadvantages:	I saw it

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

There are three really highly anticipated movies for 2008 Cloverfield has had people riled up since the summer (anyone not familiar with monster movie Cloverfield see me after class), after nearly a 20 year absence Indiana Jones returns in The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull; and finally Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem. Now I know your thinking "HELLO" maybe even screaming it aloud, I'm certainly glad I'm not beside you. But AVP2 (Alien Vs Predator 2 - this is the second movie in the series) or rather the production company behind it 20th Century Fox started advertising the upcoming movie Christmas 2006, for actual publicity perspective and I'm talking trailers this could well be the most lengthy publicity vehicle we have ever seen.

So if you're a little vague on the premise behind the AVP series here's a little recap to bring you up to speed. Let's start with the Alien aspect - The Alien films have been in production for near on 30 years, the first Alien movie was made in 1979 and for a while was the biggest money making horror movie of all time. Set in space and in the earth's far distant future a group of space hauliers land on an uncharted planet following a distress call, the crew accidentally pick up the Alien (in what you could classify as a bit of a face off) and pay for it with their life. The Alien movies initially had three sequels. There are technically two types of Alien (although there have been variants of both in the two different series). The first Alien type is the "face hugger", acting almost like a mother the face hugger deploys itself upon a life form, putting them in a sort of coma until its task is completed. The second type is the "chest buster" the chest buster is like the child of the face hugger, having allowed the unwilling recipient of the face hugger to recover from their experience, shortly after the chest buster literally bursts from the recipients chest ending their life so that the chest buster can evolve into a man size killing machine with acid for blood, acid for saliva and razor sharp claws. In case you were worried, the face hugger generally dies after face planting itself.

The Predator movies were slightly different, originally arriving on Earth in 1988 where these creatures faced off a group of Army elite in the jungle. The predators are man size and vicious with a series of weapons that can burn a hole in you the size of a football. There were two predator movies, both of which were big hits.

In the 1990's some bright spark decided that the Alien and Predator creatures were a good match for each other and a group of comic books and videogames were released. When the videogames took as much money as both franchises of the movie put together it was decided to put the two together on the big screen.

In the first AVP movie a mythology was created that both parties had been warring for years and by a stroke of our bad luck, they had landed on Earth, luckily they landed in the Antarctic and although there was some human life taken it was all over pretty quick and the world moved on.

This brings us to AVP 2; in space an Alien had intercepted a Predator craft and caused the ship to crash in present day Americas' New England. While the alien breaks free and manages to spawn courtesy of a father and son; the predators all die, but not before managing to set off a distress call, and while the Aliens breed, the Predators make their way for earth 2007.

Of course human life comes into play as both races fight each other and the humans, whom of which they need to keep killing in order to breed. But the big question of course is, is this any good?

In short no! And it's hard for me to say because I love the Aliens, I enjoyed all the original movies and I even found the first AVP quite enjoyable, although ultimately very average as a movie. AVP 2 does not even manage to make its way to the middle ground; it all seems incredibly cheap, and more annoyingly incredibly predictable.

The story of AVP 2 is pretty generic, older slightly wayward brother in this case Dallas (played by Rescue Me's Stephen Pasquale) returns home after time away, more sensible and with genuine feeling, looking out for his brother Ricky who he previously never gave a toss about. Ricky of course is a teenager just discovering about romance, and falling in love with the girl who just happens to be going out with the captain of the football squad, sound familiar? Of course in his new found humanity Dallas (which was interestingly the name of the Captain in the original Alien movie) will rally everyone to fight this invading series of forces. I'd like to say that there is more to the movie than this, but sadly this is not the case.

The special effects are pretty awful, where as the Alien effects have always been good, here they are quite simply a man in an Alien suit. Scenes that are really popular with fans like the Alien's inner set of teeth are really badly let down here, the inner teeth coming out slower than usual and looking almost cardboard like. The lack of shine to the predators almost phallic head shaft is also missed out here, instead opting for an often more matt colour. The Predator characters stay pretty much as they are, but for me you see they don't really float my boat, I never liked the Predator movies (although the first one had a slight charm when I was still growing up), they are not so acrobatic here instead opting for slow movies and more conventional hand to hand combat. On top of this despite for the rising of several days everything in respect of action is shot in the dark, obviously so as not to alert us to the fact that the special effects are quite frankly crap. Certain scenes are more or less impossible to see, and having read other reviews even more difficult to see on really big screens.

AVP 2 will no doubt appeal to the action movie enthusiast most notably the sad Jean Claude Van Damme or Steven Siegal type fan. Despite the bad special effects there is a fair bit of violence, and lengthy action scenes.

Another annoying side effect of the lack of light, and bad special effects, is that quite often you lose the plot as to what is going on, you suddenly realise that something is happening which re-awakens you somewhat but by this time you don't really get what's happening, either because you were distracted or you simply could not see. I was a bit surprised to discover that one of the characters died 30 minutes earlier in the movie simply because I could not see who was killed.

The acting is fairly substandard, annoying little kids, annoying teen actors and even a usual favourite of mine Steven Pasquale letting the side down opting to act like a tree rather than a human being, there is no light in his eyes like you see in Rescue Me, maybe he too gave up hope for this atrocity of a movie too.

It really hurts me to say that this is the worst film I have seen for some weeks, its dull, stereotypical, and at best depressing. Don't go to see it, if you really want to watch it wait for the DVD to come out and rent it, or wait for a TV screening ; and even on the latter option you'll feel like you have been robbed.

Alien Verses Predator: Requiem is showing in cinemas from January 18th.

End Of Class

For those wondering about Cloverfield, this big monster movie is said to be the big film of the year and if you have the time why not google the title and see the fun that you'll have. Cloverfield's advertising began in the summer where trailers were released without title. Shot entirely on handheld camera from the perspective of the actors Cloverfield will see the more or less complete destruction of New York, now this is a movie not to miss regardless of how bad its story might be. I'll be reviewing this at the start of February.

Spencer Hawken 01/08