Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007) Review

Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007) Review

Rewind to 2006. I’ve seen every Alien and Predator movie by this point at least once, and have re-watched Alien vs. Predator multiple times. The announcement comes that a second AVP movie is coming, and it’s coming on Christmas. I am beyond excited, because this time, the aliens will be more reminiscent of their design in Aliens, a new badass xenomorph-hunting predator will be featured, the predator-alien hybrid (Predalien) will be the main threat, and best of all, it will be rated R. 

Holy shit. I went to the theater on December 27^th with my best friend and we sat down and watched the alien and predator go at it again, and I was not at all disappointed. Then I bought the DVD when it came out and watched it again, only the unrated DVD sported this on the back: “More Blood…More Guts…More Gore!” But the unrated version didn’t add much more, and watching it at home, it didn’t look the same. It looked too dark. Little did I realize, the murky cinematography would be one of the main complaints people would have about this movie, among many, many other complaints…

The story is real simple: the Predalien causes a predator ship to crash-land in Gunnison, Colorado. A lone predator is sent to clean up the mess, kill the Predalien, and stop the ensuing alien invasion. Humans are once again caught in the middle. And that’s about it. 

Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (notice the title distinction, plural this time, like it should have been for the previous movie) is generally known as the lowest point in both the Alien and Predator franchise so far, and once again, I can’t argue against that. It is a bad movie. But, if I’m being honest, I don’t hate it, and I think it actually does a lot of things better than the first. 

To begin with, the main predator is an interesting character, and is often praised by fans as the highlight of the film. His nickname is “Wolf”, because he’s a one-man (one-pred?) clean-up crew, just like Harvey Keitel’s character was in Pulp Fiction (hence the name). He has a mask similar to the one the city hunter wore in Predator 2, but with more spikes and battle-damage. Wolf’s history with the xenomorphs is evident in every scar, and every second he’s on screen, he’s cool. His arsenal is great, with many of the same weapons we’ve seen before, as well as two plasma casters and a bullwhip made of alien exoskeleton.

One thing the previous AVP was lacking was hard-core-creature-on-human violence, and this one delivers that. People are getting speared, sliced, ripped apart, a chestburster comes out of a kid; it’s much more brutal than before. The creature violence is still there, too, with aliens getting blasted and dismembered. The effects are, once again, mainly practical, and actually better. Everything looks more organic and less rubbery, and I prefer the designs of the aliens and predator over the first AVP designs. And then there’s the Predalien, which is a large, powerful monster, and the main reason I was initially excited about this movie. It’s more than a cameo appearance; this thing is a formidable presence, and acts like a Queen, impregnating people with eggs from its mouth, skipping the facehugger stage entirely. I found this a scary-but-awesome new feature for the species. 

Unfortunately, even as a fan of the AVP movies, I admit, there are definitely more negatives than positives when it comes to talking about this one. The biggest issue is definitely the cinematography. In an attempt to make the creatures scarier again, the directors tried to light them as little as possible, and have them obscured by shadows and darkness. What this resulted in, was the inability to see the creatures at all, or anything else that’s going on. Some of the scenes are so poorly lit, you might as well turn off the TV and just have the audio, but there are at least some scenes that you can see pretty well, it’s just a shame so much of the movie is incomprehensible. 

The story is less convoluted than the previous AVP, but in a way, it wrecks the continuity even worse this time, when it ends (spoiler) with the military dropping a nuclear bomb on the town, killing all the aliens and the predator and the Predalien, but also, wouldn’t that make people curious? And there are a bunch of survivors at the end who saw them and know what happened, so why is the general public still unaware of the xenomorphs when the Nostromo crew comes across them in a hundred years’ time in Alien? And speaking of the human characters…

The cast is downright terrible. It’s not everyone’s fault, though. These are the most cardboard characters you could get in a monster movie. In the past, Alien and Predator movies have had (mostly) interesting, unique groupings of characters. This time, we get a pizza guy, a guy who just got out of jail, a little girl, a generic sheriff…it’s easily the worst collection of characters in any of these movies. You just want to see them all die, and luckily, most of them do, some in pretty brutal ways. But it’s still a failure to lack any interesting characters (that are human, anyway) when there are so many.

Certain nitpicky things just annoy me, as a fan, such as during Wolf’s final battle with the Predalien. He mortally wounds it, but the acid blood doesn’t do much of anything. The directors actually mentioned wanting to have Wolf’s arm melt off during this part, but they didn’t have enough in the budget for that. Considering the budget wasn’t that big, they did a pretty good job in giving the creatures so much screen time. And to be fair, there are some fun moments, like when Wolf stabs his spear right through an alien’s head and out its mouth, or when one of the humans gets skewered to a wall by Wolf’s shuriken blades. Like the other AVP movie, it’s mostly about cool creature moments. 

Something I find interesting is, it seems the first AVP movie depicted the xenomorphs as the superior species, whereas AVP 2 makes the predators out to be more superior. In AVP, the aliens, despite being somewhat in the predators’ control, kill two out of three predators with relative ease, then begin to break out, to the point where the last predator must detonate his self-destruct device, which the Queen survives, and manages to kill the last predator before being dragged to an icy grave courtesy of the last human survivor. In AVP 2, one predator single-handedly kills dozens of aliens with relative ease, and in the end, is locked in mortal combat with the Predalien before both are killed by the nuke. If you want to get real nitpicky, you could say that was because the predators in AVP were on their first hunt and not yet experienced, whereas Wolf was a veteran hunter, but now I’m just getting way too nerdy with it all. It’s clear Paul W.S. Anderson (first AVP writer-director) was a bigger fan of Alien, and the Strause Brothers (AVP 2 directors, who had never directed a movie before this) were bigger Predator fans. 

Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem is not a superior sequel, nor is it inferior. When I was younger, I would have ranked it just slightly above the first AVP, but now, I’d rank it slightly below. I give them some credit in giving fans plenty of what they wanted, by following up the cliff hanger ending, bringing the Predalien to life, and delivering more creature action and gore, but any kind of suspense or terror is abandoned as a result. This one is only for the biggest fans of the creatures.