Review – Alien vs. Predator: Requiem

Be sure to wait until after dark and watch this picture in a dimly-lit room. That’s not for spooky atmosphere as much as it’s a feeble attempt to be able to see the movie, at least a third of which is shot in light so poor that many sequences are more-or-less pitch black. On the other hand, the inability to see what’s going on is probably a blessing, judging by the quality of the parts that are actually visible. The implausible Alien-Predator cross-breed from the end of the first AvP returns as the chief baddie this time around, an unwelcome touch vastly magnified by the fact that the new uber-monster is able to plant Alien eggs in victims without the use of the creatures’ well-established bug-snake-monster life cycle. This departure from the conventions of the series was no doubt necessary to supply the mass quantities of Aliens needed to keep the story moving, but it’s also symptomatic of the brainless-yet-commercially-successful disregard for consistent plot logic. Though the production values are on par with the rest of the movies in both sets, the cast and script would have been better suited to the straight-to-video gunk that provides programming bread and butter for the Sci Fi Channel. Mildly amusing