Aliens vs Predator: Requiem 2007

Directed by: Colin Strause, Greg Strause
Written by: Colin Strause, Greg Strause
Cast: Reiko Aylesworth, Steven Pasquale, John Ortiz, Shareeka Epps, Johnny Lewis, Sam Trammell, David Paetkau
Studio: Fox
Genre: Science-Fiction
Official Site: www.avp-r.com

Plot: A Shittier Sequel That No-One Wants To A Shitty Film That No-One Wanted

Review:

It was around the 60 minute mark of this 90 minute movie that I realised, I hadn’t a fucking clue what was going on. Things had been happening for that last hour, the Predalien was born, a Predator ship crashed in Colorado, people had been dying for a good while and the National Guard had been called. But for the life of me I couldn’t tell you who any of the characters were, what their motivations were or why any of this was happening.

Near as I can figure, the Predalien started birthing Aliens from the town residents, the Predators send in one of their guys to clean up and the humans are just sort of there. That’s it, that’s the story, that’s everything this film has to fucking offer us, no wonder I didn’t know what was going on, there was nothing going on.

“Oh but Clancy...” I hear you cry. “It’s a film about survival, even the first Alien film boiled down to just surviving.” Well sit down cunt and listen up, yes all Alien and Predator films boil down to survival, every horror film boils down to just survival but what makes them work is what they build around that. In Alien it’s about blue-collar workers going against a perfect organism and trying to find a weakness, in Predator it’s the fight of machismo between killing for sport and killing to survive. This film has none of that, it’s a fucking shitty slasher script that got slapped with an AvP sequel title and thrown out the door, nothing but a group of idiots getting killed and not a single reason for any of it to be happening.

Oh, and SPOILER WARNING, the end result is to just nuke the town. Yeah, hundreds if not thousands dead and the film treats it as a triumph because the characters with names managed to survive.

The biggest giveaway that this is a shitty slasher film is the sheer number of characters they introduce just to be killed off, sometimes within the same scene, let me knock off a few examples.

A cop, find himself over his head with a lot of unexplainable corpses, seems to the main support character then he fucks off somewhere else for the last 20 minutes.

A woman whose husband and son have gone missing in the woods, goes the same way as the cop.

A local waitress worried about her missing husband, killed in her very next scene.

The bully boyfriend of the main guy’s love interest, actually I don’t know when he’s killed, he just sort of stopped being there.

No-one matters, no-one is ever led to feel like they matter but the film insists on pushing these people at us so they can say ‘Hey look at us, we’re killing all these people, aren’t we being cool, so may characters you thought would make it are dying.’ And really they’re not being cool because they focus so much on killing these people that they forget to make us give a shit.

But what about the people we do get to know, are they worth anything. Short answer no, long answer no and go fuck yourself for being stupid enough to ask. The majority of them are fucking college kids that don’t any better and yet somehow become the main focus when they should’ve been the first to die. We had Main Kid who looked like a discount version of the Blandest Man Alive, we has Love Interest who was the hottest blonde this film could afford, I mean she looked nice but there was nothing to her, will give the film props for actually killing her off which was a surprise but props immediately taking away because it’s needless shock value which this film is full off. We Had Main Kid’s Brother, also known as the Convict, some Discount Wannabe Bad-Ass who took up the role because his brother was a pansy and no-one else would, I swear I actually got him and his brother confused more times than i care to admit. And rounding things out there was Military Mum & Her Tagalong... I mean her daughter, the most she contributed to the film was the ability to fly a helicopter allowing this film to try and slip in a ‘Get to the choppa’ reference like it feels it’s earned the right to quote Arnie.

One of the big complaints about the film is how dark it is, not in tone but actually being able to see, my guess is they were trying so hard to appear dark and moody that they went way fucking overboard and made it impossible to see anything. It’s fucking infuriating when the film actually puts Predators, Aliens and even the Predalien when it can be bothered to show up, all on-screen and we finally get the only reason to watch this piece of goatfuck, and it’s impossible to tell who is what and what is where. They’re all too similar looking and the camera cuts them like a motherfucker so all I have to go on is what colour of blood is spilled at the end of the fight. This is not how you make a fucking action scene, this is how you lose your audience interest in three fucking seconds, then it gets worse cause it starts raining and now you don’t even get a clear view at the greyish-green blobs on screen.

What’s worse than the part you’re not able to see are the parts that you are able to see, the film has a BAD case of trying to be edgy, like a 14 year old listening to Linkin Park edgy. Because the film has absolutely nothing to show for itself it tries to stand out with moments of shock value, just missing the shock and the value, again SPOILER WARNING cause I’m running through some of them. One of the first victims is a kid who gets a chest-burster through the... well the chest, how fucking hardcore is that? Oh wait they killed off Main Guy’s love interest, however will we have a happy ending now? It’s not like she fucking ran off at the first sight of blood whining like a fucking toddler. What’s that about the waitress looking for her husband, she just found out she was pregnant, but the Predalien got her, oh my God, how will they ever top that? What about a nameless pregnant woman who’s water just broke, how about we watch the Predalien force eggs down her throat so that he fucking stomach explodes.

Try not to cut yourself on the controversy you fucking cunts. You want shock value, look to Alien 3, I don’t like Alien 3 but the scene where Ripley has Tywin Lannister do an autopsy on Newt is fucking uncomfortable to watch because you’re with Ripley watching someone she loved and cared for, and a fucking 10 year old at that, get cut open. That’s shocking, this comes across like it was written by a 12 year old after watching The Evil Dead for the first time.

I only watched AvP: Requiem for the completionist in me and even he’s telling it to fuck off and die, so it is written, so let it be done. Movie’s rotten asswater and that’s all you need to know.