ALIEN VS. PREDATOR – REQUIEM(2007)Starring: Steven Pasquale, Reiko Aylesworth, Johnny Lewis, Kristen Hager, John Ortiz & Robert Joy. Directed by: Colin & Greg Strause (The Brothers Strause).

The Strause Brothers owe me big time. I’ve just paid a whole bunch of medical bills for going to the doctors and then to an optometrist and I blame those bastards! I stayed up last night watching Alien VS. Predator Requiem foolishly in the dark (as one does with creepy sci-fi films) and now my eyes are fucked. I swear, permanent fucking eye damage from constantly squinting and trying to make out what the fuck was going on in almost every scene! But before I get too wound up on any of that, let’s get the thrilling storyline out of the way and I use the word thrilling very loosely.

**AVPR is the “slick & stylish” abbreviation of the title, as if you didn’t know about this trend, which from what I can tell was brought into appeal by Independence Day, eg. ID4 (shakes fist at ID4).**

AVPR starts off where AVP (slick & stylish) ends. The last Predator warrior from AVP laid out, dead, on a table by the loading dock of the Predator’s spacecraft. If you’ve seen the first film you know to expect a wee Alien to burst out of the Predator’s chest, which it does in surprising fashion. But what’s this… This is no ordinary Alien, it’s a hybrid mix of the two, it’s a PRED-ALIEN. At this point I am lead to assume that the standard Aliens we have seen in the entire series have been hybrid mixes of humans and Aliens because why should it be any different to the Alien exiting the Predator in a mutated form. After all there’s no real DNA combining inside the chest. Alien 3 kills this whole notion on its own, showing the x-ray of the Alien inside Ripley, which is simply attached the inside of her, growing whilst sleeping, as a baby does. Also in Alien 3, we see an alien bursting out of a dog, yet it does not seem any different, no urges to chase sticks and lick it’s own balls, but I guess we’re leading down Friday the 13^th territory of “oh forget all that shit, it’s in the past now”, damn it I hate inconsistencies. Don’t get me wrong, I love this whole idea of the Pred-Alien and it’s one of the best things the movie has to offer. Actually, it’s the whole basis for the sequel really, that’s the reason I’m making this argument so lengthy at this stage of the review. Surely this mutation could’ve been from other reasons & not from something we’ve seen happen time and time again (between human AND animal) with no alternative result. Oh wells, I’ll just eat some more popcorn and move on.

Anyway, the Pred-Alien (who is one big, ugly & vicious fucker) slaughters all the Predators on the spacecraft, forcing it to make a crash landing on Earth. Where does it land of all places? A small & quaint country town in the good old US of A of course! At this point I must refer to the poster’s tagline:

“THIS CHRISTMAS THERE WILL BE NO PEACE ON EARTH.”

Which should then have a sub-tagline reading:

“Except for the billions of people who live OUTSIDE of this small US country town who will have a perfectly pleasant Christmas (annoying relatives aside).”

Or to make the tagline more slick & stylish to match the title, it could read:

“TCTWBNPOE.”

“EFTBOPWLOOTSUSCTWWHAPPC(ARA).”

Anyway, within the woods of this small country town a father & son are hunting, killing animals being a favourite father/son bonding activity (technically making us no better than any Predator or Alien). The Predator ship crash lands over them and after staring at the spacecraft for sometime, the father decides to go let the town Sheriff know. Good idea, the Sheriff will definitely know what to do about this intergalactic spacecraft. Before the father and son can even exit the woods a couple of wily face huggers get hold of them and begin alien to mouth intercourse.

While the father & son sleep, a surviving Predator manages to set his self-destruct device, right before being killed off by an Alien. This destroys the wrecked spaceship and a lot of Alien evidence within. The father and son wake up some time later only to experience the Aliens bursting out of their chests (in a nice gory scene reminiscent to the good old days of Aliens) and off we go for an Alien invasion. The Pred-Alien & minions head to the sewers to live in the darkest possible place in the town to stay out of sight (I guess??). Here they use the bums sleeping in the sewers to breed.

Cut to Planet Predator and the big king daddy Predator has taken note of the crash landing. He’s pissed, so off he goes to chase up, investigate and hunt down the remaining Aliens. Heading off light years to a planet to chase up a crashed spacecraft might seem a little bit extreme but it’s just passable for one reason. I personally think Predator 2 showed at the end the compassion and respect the Predators, as warriors, have for each other, dead or alive. I’m talking at the end where the Predator is killed by Danny Glover and is carried off by his mates. So y’know, the Predator in this film is just concerned, that’s all. He wants to make sure things are okay. They try to pull off some other stupid story, where the Predator gives a shit about the humans finding out about the Aliens and he seems to be covering up any evidence with some kind of caustic solution that eats away at the dead Alien bodies. If somebody can explain why he really cares, let me know. Surely covering it up wasn’t too important considering the last Predator in AVP let a human witness go, respecting her as an “equal” warrior. Meh.

Nevertheless, the Predator makes his way to earth, investigates the crash site, finds the bodies of the father & son along with the dead face huggers and pours the solution over them to dissolve the evidence.

Cut to multiple human sub-plots (can’t have a story without the humans). The first sub-plot being about a young lad called Ricky, who works as a pizza delivery driver. He has to deliver some pizzas to the house of his ex-girlfriend, Jesse, where she’s hanging out with friends and… HER NEW BOYFRIEND! Anyway, we know that when Ricky gets to his ex-girlfriend’s house the boyfriend is going to pick on him while she stands their looking apologetic. Her current boyfriend throws Ricky’s keys into a drain and Jesse sympathises with him while thinking “you bastard” about her boyfriend, yelling out things like “leave him alone, etc.”. Though she’s still quite prepared to go back into the house with him and have fun eating pizza & watching television for the rest of the night, while her ex-boyfriend goes home rejected.

Ricky heads home to get a baseball bat to beat the shit out of his bully. Fortunately for Ricky, his older brother Dallas has come home from being locked up. He’s back in town to make amends and he wants to be a new man. He talks Ricky out of getting revenge and instead offers to help him find his keys. They go down to the sewer where darkness, eye squinting & key finding ensues.

A second sub-plot has a woman, Kelly, coming home from serving in the army in Iraq. Her husband and daughter come out of the house welcoming her with hugs. Not before long her daughter is rummaging through her mother’s possessions and pulls out a pair of night-vision goggles, asking if they’re for her, with which Kelly responds yes… Wh-wha-huh!? OF COURSE THEY ARE. The army let me take this equipment home with them, and now that I’ve used it for seeing the enemy in the dark so I can kill them, I’m going to give it to you for a toy! Anyway, they go inside because I’m sure they have a lot of catching up to do.

At this point, there is a search and rescue team out to find the missing father & son in the woods as the wife has expressed concerns to their absence. After a long and arduous search, they find nothing and call it a night. One officer is left out in the woods for a final search when he comes across the Predator, how he made him out in all that darkness is beyond me because I could barely see what was happening. It’s easily said that the officer was no match for the Predator and he is killed quickly.

It is soon discovered that this poor fellow is now missing in the woods and the Sheriff heads out to find him. This leads to one of my favourite scenes in this film. Upon entering the woods the Sheriff finds a pile of guts lying on the ground, only to look up and find his fellow officer hanging from a tree, skinned alive. This, along with the jungle drums score from the original Predator, is a fantastic treat for any Predator fan and is sorely missing from AVP. We want the Predator to be bad ass and kill humans, not team up and run down halls with them. It’s safe to say after this discovery the Sheriff has not a fucking clue what is going on.

Cut to (shit how many stupid sub-plots can this movie have) Ricky & Jesse having a secret meeting down by the school pool. She has decided to “fire” (what the fuck – you mean break up with?) her boyfriend and wants some of Ricky again. Jesse clearly knowing how tight her body is gets half naked with a smug smile on her face, as if to be thinking “how fucking hot is this piece of ass?” about herself. Foolishly Ricky is lead totally by his dick and wants her back, apparently not fussed by the fact she’s a completely selfish & indecisive bitch who treats her love interests like employees. Before they can get stuck into each other, her ex-boyfriend shows up with his two mates; Aggressive Jock & Token Black Guy. They start to brawl and fall into the pool, where the fight continues.

Now, the Predator is down in the sewers hunting down the Aliens. An awesome battle breaks out between the Predator & several Aliens, well it was PROBABLY awesome but I COULDN’T SEE ANY OF IT!!! Once again the film is ruined by the oddly dark lighting setup. The fight bursts out through the road and into a dark, empty street. During the commotion the Aliens manage to escape. Damn it, the Predator will have to track them down again.

-”Hey brother Strause, maybe we should make the picture darker?”
-”IT’S DARK ENOUGH!”
*NOTE bored lighting crew in background*

The Sheriff is sitting with Dallas (Ricky’s older bro) in the bar, talking about finding his officer mate skinned alive in the woods. He gets a call out to a “gas explosion” (explosion from fight between Pred & Aliens) in town. Dallas comes with him because he’s having a bad day… and I guess that’s enough reason to let a civilian travel with a cop in a patrol car to what could be a potentially dangerous gas leak.

Following the Aliens, the Predator is lead to the town’s local power station, where he begins firing shots left & right at the Aliens as they run all over the place. This of course creates a lot of damage at the power station, thus blacking out the town.

Back to the kids, who are still fighting in a pool with Jesse once again yelling out things like “stop it!” & “leave him alone!”. Anyway, while they’re fighting an Alien pops out of nowhere and jumps into the pool and – OOP! – wouldn’t you know it, he kills the Token Black Guy. This means the Token Black Guy gets to say one line: “AUUUUURRRGH!” and the white kids have time to get away. But before they can even escape the pool centre Aggressive Jock is killed too. Ricky, Jesse & the jerk manage to completely escape while the Alien is chewing on Aggressive Jock.

The Sheriff gets another call to head to the power station as there’s been an explosion and the entire town is blacked out. Off they go with no real knowledge still of what kinda hell is breaking loose in this small town. Upon arriving, the required crews are called out, when suddenly Ricky appears out of nowhere with Jesse and the jerk. They rant and rave about being attacked by something, but not knowing what it was. Creepy, it’s got to be a monster.

Cut to (sighs) Kelly’s daughter trying to sleep where she starts complaining about a monster in her room. The father comes in with Kelly and does the usual “there’s not really a monster” thing in which he opens up the closet and flashes a torch in there only to be killed by an Alien. That was excellent. Kelly grabs her daughter & they make a run for it.

An evacuation is called, shit’s getting out of hand. People are being attacked left and right. The gang (Sheriff, the jerk, Jesse, Ricky and his older bro) head off to a weapons and camping store. There they obviously arm themselves with guns and ammo along with other useful things like lanterns and torches. Two employees, who appear to be scared shitless & stoned, finally show themselves. As we know nothing about them I’ll assume they’re Alien food right now. Kelly & her daughter make it to the store too. Everyone is together in a nice big group. Little do they know the place is crawling with Aliens and the Predator is in there with his cloaking device on. Guns are fired, “GO, GO, GO!” is shouted, the stoners are killed, the main group gets away and the Predator fights Aliens.

Cut to the National Guard making their way into town to sort things out. They are attacked by a group of Aliens and pretty much stood no fucking chance whatsoever. Despite having a large amount of trained soldiers firing the same guns that the very few heroes seemed to manage to use to defend themselves with great affect later on in the film.

There’s one thing for sure, the Pred-Alien looks awesome!!

In another part of town the Pred-Alien and his mates are taking over the hospital. One particularly cool scene being the Pred-Alien pashing some pregnant ladies to plant several Alien’s within their pregnant stomaches. Very cool original idea and to me was one of the more impressive original elements of this film. A following scene shows the a nest of Aliens bursting out of a woman’s pregnant stomach which is a totally gory and impressive scene. All I could imagine was the Alien babies consuming the existing human baby in a Piranha-like feeding frenzy before bursting through her stomach wall! It’s cringe worthy and to put yourself in the shoes of the pregnant lady in this scene is quite frightening really. The feeling she is experiencing as the Aliens destroy her unborn child FROM WITHIN HER BODY! Hmmm have I said too much? Sorry about that – just trying to justify the truly horrific nature of this scene.

The Sheriff and co. come about the slaughtered National Guard soldiers. They use the radio within a tank to communicate with the guy in charge, Colonel Stevens, on the other end. They are told to head to the centre of town where there is an air-lift in 30 minutes. They all jump into the tank and start to head off. But Kelly is suspicious and thinks it’s a setup as the centre of town is where all the Aliens will be. They come along another truck full of locals, who are heading to the centre of town too. The Sheriff chooses to go to the centre of town still, despite objections, joining the men on the truck. One of the men on the truck (Ricky’s boss) chooses to go with the tank (good choice). Now we have more Alien food to keep the kill’s going.

The gang heads to the hospital to get to a helicopter on the roof. They battle their way through to the top, where right before they hit the main exit, Jesse is killed by the Predator (by accident of all things hehe). FUCK YES! If only she could have been killed twice, or viciously eaten, something terrible to pay this character back for being such boring scum. They manage to get their hands on the Predator’s gun, which Dallas uses to despatch Aliens while the rest of them run to the helicopter, with Dallas shouting a classic reference line “GET TO THE CHOPPER!”. How a single man could take the force that the Predator gun seems to emit once fired is anyone’s guess, oh well. The Pred-Alien and the Predator meet for a final showdown on the hospital roof as the gang take off in the helicopter. It would have been pretty awesome once again but I still couldn’t really see much.

While this is going on the locals are in the centre of town fighting off the hoards of Aliens. The realisation of how foolish they were to believe a government official probably kicks in right as they see a jet fly overhead dropping a huge fucking bomb on them and their town.

The nuclear explosion destroys the town, with the Pred-Alien and the Predator both destroyed (couldn’t decide on a clear winner – Freddy Vs Jason styles) and the gang’s helicopter is taken down with it.

The gang wake up all okay after the helicopter crash, the army rocks up and takes the Predator gun off of Dallas and Kelly stares up at the sky. It’s over… for NOW.

Cut to Colonel Stevens who ordered the bomb drop on the town. He is carrying a suitcase with the Predator gun in it. He opens it up and shows it to some sort of “elite” government official who says only “this weapon must not be used by man”, to which he replies “But it never was intended for man, was it?” or something along those lines. At this point I thought… well no, it’s not intended for man… it’s the Predator’s gun, it’s meant for the Predator. Then the movie ends.

WHAT AVPR DID RIGHT:

1. The Predator killed humans! Fuck yes! So he should – his name is PREDATOR! Not COOPERATOR or TEAMMEMBER or SIDEKICK TO THE HUMAN, or whatever.

2. The skinned body hanging from the tree with the guts lying below. Oh yes this was fantastic. It reminded me of how I felt the first time I saw Predator 1 with it’s all skinned body glory. I love a movie that makes me reminisce.

3. The jungle drums from Predator 1 playing in the background every now and then. Refer to last line of point 2.

4. The overall gore levels. Mmmmm… they belong in a film like this and I believe they did very well. It just added to the fun.

5. Less CGI than AVP.

6. The Strauss Brothers having good intentions. They really did and you can see it. Every now and then the film reminded me of the old school Predator stuff. But it just kept failing, by the following points.

WHAT AVPR DID WRONG:

1. The lighting was way too fucking dark. Even the DAY scenes were too dark. At first I thought, it MUST be my eyes, but it was bad lighting. What I’m amazed at is didn’t they notice this while they were editing the film? How could the darkness of this film not be noticed. I can only assume it was so dark to hide special FX flaws or something? I don’t know because the FX looked pretty fucking good (when visible) to be honest. No matter what is said, the lighting in this film is inexcusable.

2. The script and writing in general is pretty shit. Irritating people saying irritating things about irritating events. The whole human sub-plot was weak with two different people returning from “being out of town” which is reacted to in the similar way of which a Pleasantville local would react to Main Street actually going somewhere. Not to mention the whole underlying love story. We don’t need human sub-plots! We ARE fucking HUMANS, we know how stupid, fickle and pathetic we are! We came to see an ALIEN – VERSUS –A PREDATOR! Don’t write another stupid love story into the next one, IF there is a next one (probably wont be).

3. Why do you insist on treating us like fools? Don’t assume we’ve “forgotten” things from past entries. For instance my earlier point about the mutation between Predator and Alien but not between a dog and an alien. Maybe I’m just wrong and I’m sure I’ll be corrected if I am. I’m just saying, treat the audience with some fucking respect because most of us have sat through all the original films, were then punished by AVP, only to be slapped in the face by AVPR. Which most fans thought was going to be our REWARD after seeing the awesome unrated trailer.

(I KNOW there are less wrongs than rights but the wrongs cover more of the film and are more important than pretty much all of the right’s I’ve mentioned, which are all little points.)

This leads me to some DVD points. It might just be in Australia, because our cinema version was rather brutal, but this UNRATED version is no different. I actually hate UNRATED versions in Australia. Because it has in huge RED LETTERS – UNRATED, only to have MA15+ printed right next to it, which is indeed A RATING!

The DVD looks fantastic though with some amazing sound, especially viewed in DTS with the volume all the way up! W00o0oo0o0o!

I foolishly bought the standard edition so there were no special features on my copy L Boohoo.

My final words on Alien VS Predator - Requiem are mixed. In some ways I think it’s a great film, so much fun at times with some amazing scenes. Then sometimes it’s a total cunt spitting in your face, pissing on everything you loved about the series while laughing at you, assuming your ignorance to its attack on your own integrity.

I would say watch it when you’re hungover as it’s best to watch the film when you’re not thinking, to allow some more fun out of it, instead of frustration. The only problem being, watching a film is tough on your eyes enough when hungover, not to mention this film with all of its complete darkness. It could’ve been an amazing looking film, but the lighting killed it. The script and story when humans are on screen is just really shit. Overall the film mostly fails (for me) because there isn’t enough Predator or Alien and there’s way too much human. Let’s hope for more creature and less human next time. I will definitely be in cinemas judging because no matter what, I’m the sort of fan (and there’s many of you out there) who will go back knowing it will probably be shit, but risking it just for one glimpse of the bad ass hunter that is the Predator.

2 out of 5.

- The Bludgeoner.

PS. Oh yeah, Aliens are cool too.