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Thursday, May 15th
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Movie Forums :: Reviews :: Aliens vs. Predator - Requiem |
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Posted on 12/29/07
Aliens vs. Predator - Requiem
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Disclaimer: I am fully aware that reviewing a film like Aliens vs. Predator - Requiem makes about as much sense as reviewing a coloring book. But seeing as how this movie does make an attempt at something resembling character development...well, it’s asking for it.
Aliens vs. Predator - Requiem takes place immediately after the events of Alien vs. Predator. An Alien has infiltrated a Predator ship inside the chest of one of their dead, and in the ensuing battle, the ship crashes to Earth. Naturally, multiple representatives from both species’ survive (and Predator reinforcements are sent) to continue their brawl in our midst. The brawl escalates, the body count rises, and the military intervenes in predictable fashion.
The problem with Requiem isn’t that it’s bad; it’s that it can’t accept the fact that it’s bad. It’s been well established that a poor film can become quite entertaining under the “so bad it’s good” principle. This is especially true of campy horror films, which often develop cult followings when they embrace the genre’s hallmarks of gratuitous nudity and comically brutal violence. But Requiem thinks it’s a real movie, and wastes valuable time introducing us to characters we’re destined not to care about. Sitting here now, I can remember exactly one character’s name.
This would be bad enough, but establishing characters and defining their relationships has the ripple effect of requiring them to scream, cry, and yell “nooooo!” every time someone they know dies. This also wastes time; time that would be better spent moving onto the next violent death.
This is not to say that there are not violent deaths; there are quite a few of them. We get deaths by decapitation, deaths by impalement, and just about everything in-between. For whatever reason, pregnant women are the focus of an inordinate number of attacks, as well. Expecting a film like this to exercise any sort of restraint is probably silly, but these sorts of classless attempts to shock the audience are beyond the pale.
The acting isn’t generally bad, per se, but it’s completely forgettable. There are some cringe-worthy exceptions, though, like the token blonde who delivers the line “we’re all going to die, aren’t we?” with a disinterested certainty that could only come from having read the script.
Despite being about a war between two brutal alien races, Requiem somehow manages to induce boredom. Most of the film’s developments are predictable, and the ones that aren’t, aren’t interesting. It doesn’t come within a mile of the elegant restraint of the first Alien films, or the masculine bravado of the Predator series. It won’t even content itself with being a tongue-in-cheek splatter fest. It has no idea what it wants to be, and ends up being a waste of time.
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