Review of punch 'em up FU - Alien vs. Predator: Requiem

Ooh boy, after writing about food for the soul with the Pacific Rim review, now its time for something which makes the soul decay. Something which I find horrifying to either behold, remember or speak of. Something which somehow didn’t kill two franchises dead with one stone, but instead caused those franchises to revert so jarringly to their original forms we all got whiplash. And it is…

The first Alien vs Predator, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson (not Paul Thomas Anderson, who I really want to direct an Alien movie), is actually an entertaining, if disposable, action film. It has great set design, awesome special effects and the two titular monsters provide a satisfying battle to behold.

What the studio took out of the movie’s reception was “we need more violence, we need someone without ambition to make a cheap follow-up for profit, we need the lowest common denominator of talent!” So we got the Strause Brothers, two VFX supervisors who had never directed before at the time, and Shane Salerno, the 4th best out of the five writers of Armageddon. We should have known what would happen, and just stayed home and knocked our vinyl figures together.

We could have been doing this for two hours and had a more satisfying experience.

In all honesty, Aliens vs Predator: Requiem might be the worst-directed movie I have ever seen in my entire life. You think Ed Wood, Michael Bay, Uwe Boll, Tommy Wiseau, Darren Doane and Dinesh D’Souza are awful directors? At least you can see some sort of passion for what they are doing, even if they are blind to the quality of their own work, and that could give their films a mild sense of admirability. With the Strause Brothers, you get scenes with no lighting whatsoever, meaning you can’t see a damn thing, and all other scenes are tinged a vomit-inducing shade of yellow or green. All of the actors clearly want to be somewhere else, no action scene has a sense of space or excitement, all of the dialogue is delivered in the same boring way, few scenes feel genuinely connected, and everything feels pointless and cheap. It feels like the Strause’s walked on set, just said, yeah, put the camera there, we’ll film that and put some Alien’s there with our old MacIntosh’s in the back of our van, that’s good, let’s go home and cash the cheque.

Aside from the direction, everything about this movie feels like a backyard slasher movie that a young filmmaker without confidence would make, with his dental student “buddies” as actors. The needless and awfully acted subplot about this guy crushing on a girl, the randomness of characters introduced, the lack of any coherence or skill to the action, the sets which could be someone just going outside with a Steadicam just after rush hour, and the complete lack of storytelling originality in any aspect.

What's happening? I don't know what's happening, you don't know what's happening, who the f*ck cares?

Even the violence in this movie is terrible, and we came to this specifically for Alien-on-Predator violence. Every action scene is shot in near-darkness, with any movement being incomprehensible even on a 4K tv, and all of the fighting is slow moving, lacking energy or lacerated with bargain-bin CGI. But when it comes to the human violence, my god, why did we need to see an Alien burst out of a child’s chest, or a monster shove a phallus-like tube down a pregnant woman’s throat to deliver eggs which will hatch and eat her foetus alive, or someone bisected straight down the centre like in Kingsman only with a tonne of fake intestines and goo? It is disgraceful.

And the worst part? The main villain of the movie – the Predalien – doesn’t even get framed properly in the movie. Only in the final shot, where there’s actual light from a nuclear blast, can you even tell what the hell everyone is terrified about. And it still looks like a patchwork Halloween costume.

This is the best look we will ever get of the Predalien, and it's the costume getting prepared for the next day of shooting.

In short, I want to share a short anecdote. A few months ago, when we were doing a cleanout of our DVD’s when moving the TV to the back room, this one was immediately in the “go to second-hand shop” pile. That night, I had a weird dream that my Dad had secretly taken the DVD of Requiem out of the donated bag, taken it to the Coburg Drive-In, lay it on the ground, and burned it. And me, and my sister, and my brother were there, merely relishing the burning as though it were a religious experience. Then we were attacked by Ood from Doctor Who, but that’s beside the point.

Alright, which movies have you seen which had an incredible cho dan, or which ones fall over when they attempt an axe kick? Leave your answers in the comments.