Please be the actual Requiem....
CJH from ,
9th October, 2009
Apologies for massive review of doom! Now AVP was bad but I appreciated how it looked... nothing else. It was stupid, pointless and proved that a 'versus' film doesn't work. When I heard there was a sequel I was devastated, until they said things like 'more action' and 'more blood and gore'. I was interested. What they didn't mention was, 'more pointlessness' and 'more vacuous characters'. I *tried* to not think about the classics it is leeching off... clearly AVP films are for a different audience... but when I see the Alien rear its fearsome head, I can't not think about the awesomeness of Alien and Aliens (hell, Alien 3 and Resurrection look like gold dust in comparison) You see I am referring more to Alien than Predator... this is because I have much more respect for the Alien films, unlike Predator films which.. as evidence here, bear the brunt of this travesty a lot easier. From the start, I was actually interested. We see a dad and his kid in the forest, visually succumbing to Face-Huggers (awesome, I thought). Alas it stopped there. We are then introduced to about fifty different characters, all in the forms of different American stereotypes with all the vacuous nature of Hollyoaks inhabitants. This isn't helped by the way we are given so little time to become attached to any one of them. So naturally things go from bad to worse, Aliens start reproducing in the sewers along side the new 'Predalien' which looks like something a ten year old would design. The direction is terrible... the action is choppy and badly edited while also being incredibly under-lit; you can barely see what's going on. Not to mention the 10 year old daughter of one of the characters, seemingly quite content and unphased by her mother next to her, who's blasting away with a high calibre assault rifle. Asides from the over-abundance of human characters, the Aliens and Predator we want to see are constantly interrupted by 'under-achiever being beaten up by the 25 year old bullies', 'token dense blonde stripes to her underwear for a few minutes' and don't forget the 'two token stoned guys' who are in it for an irrelevant 1 minute before being decapitated..... Not to mention the film generally being dense enough to do this as a scene: Stupid bully: 'We should leave now! The National Guard will be here soon!' Rugged, convict lead hero guy: 'Stop being and idiot, it will take too long!' *They load up with weapons in a shop* *Scene cuts immediately to the National Guard arriving* This film is beyond poor. Yet I find myself completely perplexed as to how this has happened. Did the creators not look at the reason why Alien and Predator were so successful? How can two great 18 rated horror films combine into a 15 which could be regarded as badly as Species 2? It deeply saddens me because young people are being brought up with this sorry depiction of two of the most fearsome creatures ever made in film. Alien is terrifying still, and it's what, twenty-nine years old? Aliens has some of the greatest animatronics and special effects ever made after twenty-two years. It saddens me to see Giger's Alien taken completely out of context next to completely dense actors and a non-existent story. I only hope that this requiem really is the end of AVP... though I doubt the creators even knew what the 'awesome sounding Latin word' actually meant. (clearly not... given it ended on a disjointed 'cliffhanger' which made absolutely no sense to me)
Read all recent reviews
