Aliens vs Predator: Requiem
Review
by William Barker
I'm often accused of being an easygoing
movie reviewer. 'You
rate movies too highly' noted one colleague a few years ago, after I
posted a review of The Fast And The Furious.
Thinking about it, I guess it does take a
seriously bad movie to make me upset, but I've just found that movie - Aliens vs Predator: Requiem.
Arguably the worst movie I've seen in some
years (and I enjoyed
the first flick, Aliens
vs Predator),
AvP:R
takes us back to the ending of the first flick when an alien
bursts out of the chest of a predator, creating a hybrid alien-predator
that quickly decimates the crew of predators (also an alien race).
With
no crew to pilot the ship, the errant space vessel begins to spiral out
of control and as luck would have it, it lands on Earth. And not on the
70% of the planet which is ocean. No, it lands in America.
What
ensues is one of the goriest sci-fi films ever made, and if you like
splatterhouse stuff and nightmarish chest-bursting alien parasites, you
may enjoy parts of this movie.
But overall it comes across
as rushed.
The script is woeful, there are holes in the
plot larger than those in the ozone layer, and the acting makes Neighbours
look Oscar-worthy.
I'd
be willing to overlook sloppy production values and rushed scenes if
there were some cool fights between two of science fictions scariest
creations, Predators and H.R Giger's Aliens, but there ain't.
The
film descends into a poor horror movie where I cared so little for the
main characters that I wanted them to be disemboweled in the nastiest
possible way.
The nicest thing I can say about the movie
is that
it's gory, and it has some average special effects. It's rated R18+,
which allowed the directors (brothers Colin and Greg Strause) to make
it ultra-violent.
But
lots of blood and ichor doesn't necessarily mean scary. The whole movie
was really dark and hard to see at times, there were no real scares,
the small town setting was lame, and I'm really pissed off I went to
see this woeful film.
Ultimately, Alien vs Predator: Requiem
has tarnished both the Predator
and Alien
franchises which is a huge shame, and how it even got the funding is
beyond me.
I think you'd have more fun putting your
head in a vice and squeezing your brain out through your nose than
watching this.
I like movies - I even like bad movies - but
this is beyond bad. It's shameful.
1 out
of 5
Aliens vs
Predator : Requiem
Australian release: 26th
December, 2007
Cast: John Ortiz, Steven Pasquale, Johnny
Lewis, Reiko Aylesworth
Director: Colin Strause &
Greg Strause
Website: Click
here.
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