Review: Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem

½ *

Reiko Aylesworth, Steven Pasquale, Gina Holden, David Horsnby. Directed by Colin Strause and Greg Strause. Written by Shane Salerno. Rated R. 86 minutes. 20^th Century Fox.

An empty-headed mess of a horror film, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, the laughably titled and hopefully final chapter in a misguided amalgam of movie creatures, is the kind of junk usually peddled into theaters each January. In fact, advanced one-sheets for the film indicated "January 2008" as the intended original release. Someone apparently made the savvy decision to open the film on Christmas day as a sort of an Atonement-antidote for undiscerning moviegoers preferring their holiday spirits bloody and mangled.

This time around, an alien infestation aboard a Predator spaceship results in a crash deep within a Colorado forest. After an ugly attack on a father and son in the film’s opening sequence, the alien brood set upon the nearby small town (is there any other kind?) of Gunnison, home to ragtag survivors so insipid they set a new low even for this dreck. In pursuit of these aliens is a Predator (yes, only one) bent on getting rid of them, a task becoming increasingly harder as they multiply to the nth on townsfolk, giving the film the opportunity to replay its one trick pony every ten minutes or so—the chest-bursting alien, an image once fascinating and terrifying a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Remember Sigourney Weaver violently clutching her chest in slow motion during the opening hospital scenes in James Cameron’s 1986 Aliens? What made that scene so effective was the fear of knowing what evil might be lurking inside, and in Weaver’s and Cameron’s hands, it was imaginative and visceral. Sadly, the scene has devolved into a parade of gore, strictly on the surface, in your face, exploding ad nauseum.

The cardboard story goes something like this: Put-upon pizza delivery boy (Johnny Lewis) pines for resident hot blonde (Kristen Hager) to the dismay of her boyfriend (David Paetkau). His older, recently paroled brother (Steven Pasquale) shows up to keep the younger bro on the straight and narrow. In one ridiculous sequence, the two brave a dark, rancid sewer, to find—get this—a set of lost keys. Isn’t there another set somewhere?

A laughable development finds an Iraq war vet (Reiko Aylesworth) returning home who—bingo—knows how to drive a tank just when necessary. Her distant daughter (Ariel Gade) in tow, she recovers remarkably in the very next scene following her loving husband’s mutilation. This sets the tone for the logic to follow as older brother and old buddy sheriff (John Ortiz) corral the rapidly dwindling group. At least the film does make a half-hearted political critique at one juncture when a naïve teen remarks, "The government doesn’t lie to us," or something to that effect. Uh-huh.

The few survivors convene in the center of town waiting for an "airlift" to take them to safety, while one by one they predictably fall prey to—you got it—either the aliens, or the Predator. The Predator himself, whose only nifty trick is being able to go invisible at will, keeps showing himself and alerting everyone to his presence. He also proves a slow swimmer in the high school lap pool.

The film manages no suspense, content to simply hurl creatures out in shock cuts that have little impact. The aliens, once gleaming, mysterious and frighteningly beautiful killing machines with the power to paralyze prey with shock and awe by virtue of ferocious, dripping, razor-like teeth, have been reduced to quickly-seen killers darting about, in and out of the frame. The Predator, on the other hand, while seeming more intelligent if less elegant in design, doesn’t transcend its B-movie origins simply by virtue of the fact that it looks, in the end, like an overgrown actor skulking around in a suit.

Alien, Aliens and Alien 3 were directed by real filmmakers: Ridley Scott, James Cameron and David Fincher. And though Fincher’s version didn’t approach the poetry of Scott or the bulldozing action of Cameron, it at least had a few ideas of its own. The franchise ceased to matter after Fincher’s 1992 installment, and the Predator series never mattered anyway, but at least had ace action moviemaker John McTiernan at the helm with Governor Shwarzenegger’s gusto on the trigger. The new film, on the other hand, doesn’t manage a single effective moment of awe or suspense. Skip it.

Films I don’t want to see next year:

Aliens vs. Predator: A New Beginning

Aliens vs. Predator: Rebirth

Aliens vs. Predator in Iraq

Boring trash and a lump of coal for Christmas.

- Lee Shoquist