Alien Versus Predator - Requiem
Steven Pasquale, Reiko Aylesworth, John Ortiz, Johnny Lewis, Ariel Gade and Kristen Hager
Directors: Colin Strause and Greg Strause
94 Minutes
20th Century Fox
2007
Rating: MA15+

A straight continuation of AVP, which I didn't even bother reviewing as it is barely worth seeing, AVP-R is a significant improvement, although there is still left much to be desired. Not that I am giving anything away, but once the Pred-Alien left its host and grew up, it started its trademark slaughtering which caused the ship to crash back to earth, to a small Colorado town. One would have thought the Predator ship would have had sensors and security systems to help prevent or deal with such an occurrence, but anyway... What follows is a lone Predator coming to earth from what is presumably his home world to clean up the mess but in the process makes just as much. The narrative also follows a bunch of cardboard cut-out characters trying to get out of town: a teenage boy, Ricky (Johnny Lewis); his crush and fellow student Jesse (Kristen Hager) who, for some reason, likes to hang out with a bunch of high school 'jocks' but is discontent about it; the boy's street-smart older brother Dallas (Steven Pasquale) who presumably just got out of jail; the local sheriff Morales (John Ortiz); Kelly (Reiko Aylesworth), a soldier who had just returned home and her young daughter Molly (Ariel Gade). That is not to say the acting was bad in itself, just that the characters were spinelessly written in the first place. I thought they were meant to be spineless after they have been attacked.

Directed by the Strause brothers, who both have extensive experience in visual effects - quite an impressive résumé really - one expected this film to be visually rich if nothing else. That is mostly the case, at least in terms of visual effects; although having directed music videos, one cannot help but wonder that these two directors have treated this film as a 94-minute rock video. Given that Daniel Pearl, the director of photography, has also been involved with music videos in the past, this probably doesn't come as a surprise. Some of the action sequences were pieced together with close shots and rapid cuts, which, when planned and executed properly, can be very effective and impressive (like Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down, cinematography by Slawomir Idziak and edited by Peitro Scalia). For AVP-R, however, this did not appear to be the case. It was almost as if as they just shot heaps of footage without being too organized about it and 'fixed it up' in post-production.

One could say not much is expected from such a film - but why shouldn't one expect more (especially veteran Predator fans)? The narrative, if one could call it as such, was tight and given that the action was constant and that the visual effects were not bad at all, this would keep many of the modern ADD audience mostly interested, at least visually. However, there was no drama, no tension, not much excitement or suspense; the human and moral elements very superficial. It would have been a more engaging film if the "story" was centred around a group of Predators taking on an entire Alien-infested planet.