Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem Review

As anyone who’s suffered through the horror of Police Academy: Mission To Moscow knows, it’s not uncommon for movie franchises to lurch downhill. But the Alien – and to a much lesser extent, the Predator – franchise has really pulled off a trick. From the majesty of Ridley Scott and James Cameron’s episodes, each entry has been almost exponentially worse than the last, to the point where this witless, joyless, pointless mash-up makes its predecessor, Paul W.S.Anderson’s Alien Vs Predator, look Oscar-worthy. And that’s not so much lurching downhill as it is plummeting off a cliff.

Anyone who watched Cameron’s Aliens might feel that there is a terrifying movie to be made about what happens in between the first facehugger attack and the point where aliens overrun the town, but AVP sure isn’t it. Instead, what we get is Hollyoaks vs Predator, as a group of annoying, one-dimensional teens spend almost as time moping about love and, ludicrously, lost keys as they do getting their heads punched through by snapping xenomorph jaws.

Directors The Brothers Strause – Colin and Greg – apparently got the gig, their first, because they’re such huge Alien and Predator fanboys. AVP would indicate that they’re fanboys of the Ain't It Cool talkback variety, guileless goons crowbarring in lame references (the hero is called Dallas; someone actually says ‘Get to the chopper!’) while emphasising splatter and swearing over the suspenseful slow burn.

Of course, both Alien and Predator were stalk’n’slash pictures disguised as sci-fi movies, but AVP comes on like a Friday The 13th sequel, where the emphasis is placed squarely on spectacular kills, including a nasty and distasteful sequence set in a maternity ward that may just be the nadir of both franchises to date.

Apart from a frustratingly brief glimpse of the Predator homeworld and one cool AvP face-off in a sewer, the creatures remain resoundingly undeveloped. In fact, this Predator is so astoundingly stupid – it covers up all traces of Aliens with a bright blue liquid that disintegrates everything, yet never uses it as a weapon; then draws attention to itself by skinning humans – that it seems there might be a purpose after all for the high-falutin’ title, and that this film is a requiem after all, a requiem for two once-great movie monsters, now defanged, neutered and buried by a couple of hacks named Colin and Greg.