To say "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem" is a turd would be an insult to turds. This is the very worst of the "Alien" series and the worst major horror movie release in years. Everyone that touched the making of this movie is going to be contaminated by it. If you didn't like Paul W.S. Anderson's "Alien vs. Predator," you are positively going to hate this.
"AVP-R's" title is apt, because it is a "requiem" for the "Alien" franchise.
Many fans were expecting an improvement over the Anderson's ill-received "Alien vs. Predator", which some of us actually liked. To put things into perspective, Anderson's movie is a masterpiece in comparison to the crap fest that the Strause Brothers concocted. At least Anderson is a good sci-fi horror screenwriter, as demonstrated by the "Resident Evil" series. "Alien vs. Predator" was somewhat dull, but it at least had a story and characters that developed throughout the movie. It was a two and a half star movie. This film is a zero-star movie – worse than a lot of direct-to-video dreck. It definitely spells the end of the "Alien" franchise in its current form.
The film opens immediately following the events in AvP, with an alien emerging from the gut of a resting Predator creature aboard a spaceship. The spaceship ends up crash landing in a Colorado forest town. A redneck father and young son hunting deer together are quickly overcome by face huggers. They wake up with the predictable result – aliens bursting out of their stomachs. The transformation happens pretty quickly compared to past "Alien" movies, minutes instead of days. But oh well.
When the father's severed hand turns up in the town sewage system, the sheriff begins to investigate the missing dad and son. The hunter's wife dimly asks him, "Do you think something happened?" (I think later in the movie, she has another choice line: "That's crazy! The government doesn't lie to people.") Needless to say, the alien infestation spreads. The town waitress gets killed and there's an attack on a hospital maternity ward (the alien is able to produce alien "twins" from a pregnant mom). Meanwhile, a Predator dispatched from the Predator world has also shown up to wipe out the aliens. Apparently he doesn’t want any trace of their existence, because he liquidates every dead alien – and dead infested human – with a special acid.
The "characters" we meet include a town pizza delivery boy with a crush on a high school girl. He's being victimized by her boyfriend, the town bully. We've got a military mom back from Iraq, her young daughter and stay-at-home dad. And we've got the town sheriff, who's "in over your head," as the town coroner puts it to him.
It's never really shown how the alien attack on the town is happening. We see a few killings and suddenly, there's an exodus of cars out of town – with major traffic. Maybe the roads are blocked? Tanks filled with National Guardsmen stream into town, and there's a U.S. military official from a control room in an aircraft who apparently wants to nuke the place. Well "apparently" is putting it mildly.
None of it makes much sense. Why would the U.S. military want to nuke a town when – according to the timeline of the film series – they shouldn't even know about the threat the aliens pose yet? Why would the Predator race care if there's a mass alien infestation on Earth? Why would they bother "covering up" the scene.
What "works" in the film are simply re-treads of scenes we have seen time and time again in other "Alien" films: face huggers, acid-as-blood-hitting-people, machine guns used against aliens.
While Anderson added something to the "Alien" mythos, and even included a very cool scene where an army of aliens are show taking over a portion of the planet, there's nothing that interesting in this confusing mess of a movie. And it's ending, featuring one of the dumbest lines in sci-fi film history, will leave you gasping with shock at how a major studio could even make a movie this bad.
2007 was one of the best years for horror in cinema. But the year ended on a very sour note indeed.
"AVP-R's" title is apt, because it is a "requiem" for the "Alien" franchise.
Many fans were expecting an improvement over the Anderson's ill-received "Alien vs. Predator", which some of us actually liked. To put things into perspective, Anderson's movie is a masterpiece in comparison to the crap fest that the Strause Brothers concocted. At least Anderson is a good sci-fi horror screenwriter, as demonstrated by the "Resident Evil" series. "Alien vs. Predator" was somewhat dull, but it at least had a story and characters that developed throughout the movie. It was a two and a half star movie. This film is a zero-star movie – worse than a lot of direct-to-video dreck. It definitely spells the end of the "Alien" franchise in its current form.
The film opens immediately following the events in AvP, with an alien emerging from the gut of a resting Predator creature aboard a spaceship. The spaceship ends up crash landing in a Colorado forest town. A redneck father and young son hunting deer together are quickly overcome by face huggers. They wake up with the predictable result – aliens bursting out of their stomachs. The transformation happens pretty quickly compared to past "Alien" movies, minutes instead of days. But oh well.
When the father's severed hand turns up in the town sewage system, the sheriff begins to investigate the missing dad and son. The hunter's wife dimly asks him, "Do you think something happened?" (I think later in the movie, she has another choice line: "That's crazy! The government doesn't lie to people.") Needless to say, the alien infestation spreads. The town waitress gets killed and there's an attack on a hospital maternity ward (the alien is able to produce alien "twins" from a pregnant mom). Meanwhile, a Predator dispatched from the Predator world has also shown up to wipe out the aliens. Apparently he doesn’t want any trace of their existence, because he liquidates every dead alien – and dead infested human – with a special acid.
The "characters" we meet include a town pizza delivery boy with a crush on a high school girl. He's being victimized by her boyfriend, the town bully. We've got a military mom back from Iraq, her young daughter and stay-at-home dad. And we've got the town sheriff, who's "in over your head," as the town coroner puts it to him.
It's never really shown how the alien attack on the town is happening. We see a few killings and suddenly, there's an exodus of cars out of town – with major traffic. Maybe the roads are blocked? Tanks filled with National Guardsmen stream into town, and there's a U.S. military official from a control room in an aircraft who apparently wants to nuke the place. Well "apparently" is putting it mildly.
None of it makes much sense. Why would the U.S. military want to nuke a town when – according to the timeline of the film series – they shouldn't even know about the threat the aliens pose yet? Why would the Predator race care if there's a mass alien infestation on Earth? Why would they bother "covering up" the scene.
What "works" in the film are simply re-treads of scenes we have seen time and time again in other "Alien" films: face huggers, acid-as-blood-hitting-people, machine guns used against aliens.
While Anderson added something to the "Alien" mythos, and even included a very cool scene where an army of aliens are show taking over a portion of the planet, there's nothing that interesting in this confusing mess of a movie. And it's ending, featuring one of the dumbest lines in sci-fi film history, will leave you gasping with shock at how a major studio could even make a movie this bad.
2007 was one of the best years for horror in cinema. But the year ended on a very sour note indeed.
