ALIEN VS PREDATOR: REQUIEM (15)

9:30am Wednesday 23rd January 2008

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THERE is a company in America that specialises in ripping off Hollywood blockbusters. The Asylum makes a film with a very similar title to the original, for example Transmorphers (Transformers), for a tiny fraction of the budget and releases straight to DVD. The quality of the films is questionable but their entertainment value is high. The great thing about The Asylum is that they are knowingly making a bad likeness of a film. The problem with Alien VS Predator: Requiem is that someone actually took the concept seriously and released it as a mainstream movie. The film is a sequel to a dire film based on a series of Dark Horse comics, themselves based on the respective Alien and Predator films, which had long become dire in their own right. One wonders why they bothered at all.

The plot, if you can call it that, begins with a space ship crashing into the Colorado Desert with a Predator/Alien hybrid on board and a whole party of Facehuggers (the Alien's method of breeding), which promptly attach themselves to as many humans as they can find. Meanwhile the Predators send one of their own to take out the aforementioned hybrid and his chums. Some humans get caught up in the middle and there may be lots of fighting and blood in the second part of the film. I say may be because it's so dark no one is really sure what is going on.

On the only plus side the humans get a lot more screen time in this story than in its predecessor, which slightly helps ones attention from wondering. But it still doesn't stop this from being a terribly moronic waste of time and energy for the actors, film crew, and paying public. Brothers Greg and Colin Strause, whose directorial inexperience is laid bare for all to see, direct it. As their forte is in visual effects supervising' I would suggest they stick to what they know - this debut is a disaster. I have already mentioned the cinematography by Daniel Park is dark, but this results in it being quite impossible to tell the difference between the Aliens and Predators, a fundamental necessity one would have thought. It is also nasty, rather than frightening: there is a particularly revolting scene involving pregnant women. Frankly this is an insult to Alien (1979) and the Predator (1987).

Clare Shepherd 2/10