Aliens Vs Predator - Requiem (DVD)

...local townspeople. The cargo of Aliens escapes and kills their captors before going on a rampage through the sleepy backwater. It's up to a single Predator to seek and destroy the Aliens and the monstrous Alien/Predator hybrid. Meanwhile the locals have to fight for their survival as a battle from beyond the stars lands right on their doorstep.

Co-directors the Brothers Strause are apparently special effects gurus, though you wouldn't ...
...effects-heavy opening that shows the Aliens causing havoc on the Predator's ship. It's a hollow start because you can't empathise with either group, as they are just killing machines. And we see all the main effects straight away, so there are no surprises. We don't get to know any of the first human victims. There's no emotional bond to them so it doesn't affect you when they die, regardless of whether they're young or old, male, female or even ... more

The quiet town of Gunnison, Colorado is the kind of sleepy place where nothing ever happens. That is until a Predator's ship crash-lands in a nearby forest with disastrous results for the Predators and the local townspeople. The cargo of Aliens escapes and kills their captors before going on a rampage through the sleepy backwater. It's up to a single Predator to seek and destroy the Aliens and the monstrous Alien/Predator hybrid. Meanwhile the locals have to fight for their survival as a battle from beyond the stars lands right on their doorstep.

Co-directors the Brothers Strause are apparently special effects gurus, though you wouldn't know from the appalling quality of this last-ditch cash-in on a dying franchise. It's not as if the terrible "Alien Vs Predator" movie required a sequel. But here we have one that dispenses almost entirely with story and gives us a range of poorly shot monster mash-ups instead. The directorial partnership's inexperience behind the character shows in almost every aspect of the movie. For a kick-off there's no preamble; it would help if the movie began with a little bit of back-story for the main human characters. Instead there is an effects-heavy opening that shows the Aliens causing havoc on the Predator's ship. It's a hollow start because you can't empathise with either group, as they are just killing machines. And we see all the main effects straight away, so there are no surprises. We don't get to know any of the first human victims. There's no emotional bond to them so it doesn't affect you when they die, regardless of whether they're young or old, male, female or even (gasp) pregnant. It's like they exist to keep the body-count up. There's no attempt to add depth to the hackneyed characters or obvious scenarios.

Part of the problem is that the directors have no idea how to build suspense. There's no sense of the humans being hunted for any length of time and you don't see the number of Aliens multiplying over a prolonged period. It's like they hatch and minutes later they're adult ravening beasts. There isn't even any tension in the fights between extra-terrestrials; the first battle is too choppy so you can't see what's going on and subsequent engagements are so explicit you can almost see the seams in the costumed-characters suits. The pacing is too rapid - everything seems to happen in a couple of days making the soapy storylines feel even more absurd. Without any tension it makes for an unbearably dull ninety-three minutes of predictable monster fights, that feels longer.

The effects aren't good enough to stand up to scrutiny. Both the Aliens and the Predators are clearly men in rubber suits, clumping about without an iota of grace or finesse. I want precise, balletic movement from people in heavy prosthetics to give them expression, but you won't find any here. I guess it's hardly surprising considering the guy playing the Alien is knocking on for fifty and the Predator is being played by a man whose previous biggest role was as Frances de la Tour's body double in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire". The technology used by the dreadlocked hunters hasn't changed since the first films. Many of the effects look retro - and not in a good way. There's an excess of day-glo goo knocking about and whatever town the film was shot in must have run dry of KY Jelly, from the amount of dribbling drool emanating from the Aliens.

The screenplay by Shane Salerno is rife with every cliché from alien invasion movies. There are too many narrative holes, so the story makes very little sense - you have the survivors struggling for their lives in a deeply unbelievable fashion on one side. On the other the Predator chases the rapidly multiplying Aliens all over the town. The characterisation is paper-thin in terms of the humans and ETs. We don't learn anything new about the Aliens or Predators; the former still kill with impunity while the latter are really macho and love nothing better than killing their intended targets and anything that gets in the way. The humans are the usual rag-tag bunch of survivors - the bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks (a cheap-as-chips Hicks), the dutiful sheriff, the military mother (aka bargain bin Ripley), the squealing child (who does naff all except make high-pitched noises), the cheerleader, the high school bullies and the well-meaning but bullied teenager. The relationships are easy to spot, but hints of back-stories are never fulfilled. For instance Dallas mentions Sheriff Morales' murky past but it is never referred to again. Then the Hispanic Sheriff says he's had enough trouble getting people to warm to him, despite being an elected official and having everyone be very nice to him. The dialogue is so bad, it must have been written on a tripe-writer. After about fifteen people have been killed, one character says "People are dying!" - no s**t Sherlock! In fact there's only one good line in the whole movie and that's from a woman who shows her naivety by saying "That's crazy - the government don't lie to people." Then the writer doesn't even know how to finish the movie, gliding through a pair of serviceable endings before wimping out with one that makes no sense and will make the filmmakers look very stupid if they don't go ahead with a sequel.

All the cast bar none have a touch of teak about them, showing the perils of using largely untested actors. As usual the teenage characters are played by those in their mid-to-late twenties and when it comes to taking on the extra-terrestrials, everyone is more than proficient with a gun. Steven Pasquale plays Dallas without a shred of originality. He's the bog-standard monster movie hero; a bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks that pulls it out of the bag when pressed. The role may be badly written, but there's something called putting your stamp on a part that he might want to try. Johnny Lewis who plays his younger brother Ricky doesn't fare much better. There's not enough to empathise with in this wimp with outdated ideas of chivalry.

Reiko Aylesworth is probably the most wooden of the cast members as token tough female O'Brien. She's never appears to be feeling any of the emotions her character is supposed to be going through, even when her husband is grabbed by an Alien. She can't mimic maternal instinct for her on-screen daughter. She seems to have been cast almost entirely for how good she looks in a tight vest. John Ortiz plays Eddie the sheriff as a stock nice guy, but he's too bland to stick in the mind. Similarly Kristen Hager is too generic as blonde cheerleader-type Jesse, who appears to have been cast on how she looks in her skimpies.

Composer Brian Tyler seems to think that loud is the same as tense when it comes to the accompanying music. He spends much of the film deafening the audience with loud brass and drum themes that might be exciting if the action was as flashy. But generally the arrangements overpower the film with an excess of brass and string stabs and overdone horror themes that rely heavily on creepy thin strings. The most effective aspect of the score is the use of heartbeat-imitating drums for the Predator's hunts.

"Alien Vs Predator - Requiem" is undermined by lacklustre direction and an absence of suspense. If the directors had spent half as much time on pushing their actors to breathe life into their characters as they had on creating shoddy physical props, this could have been something of a guilty pleasure. But an inability to fill the many plot holes (like why the Predator is destroying all evidence of the Aliens' presence) on top of the abysmal writing means the movie doesn't stand a chance. Don't waste your time, effort or money on seeing this unnecessary cash-in - read one of the far superior "Alien Vs Predator" comic books instead. 

...less