Review: Alien vs. Predator: Requiem

There’s no better way to spend Christmas Day then to share it with family and friends. Because we don’t really have any little kids in the family anymore, my family recently began a new tradition of going to the movies in the afternoon of Christmas Day. This year our movie selection was Alien vs. Predator: Requiem. I’ll admit that a big part of why I wanted to see it was because it was released on Christmas Day and to me, the timing was comedy gold. One of the tag lines for the film was, “This Christmas, there will be no peace on Earth”.

I have been a fan of the Alien and Predator movies and thought the original AvP was pretty good. The premise behind this edition is that a Predator ship that has Alien eggs as its cargo crashes on Earth. The Alien face-grabbers emerge from the eggs, find human hosts and begin to wreak havoc on a small mountain town.

Although this is the directorial debut for The Brothers Strause (Colin and Greg Strause), the pair has been in the business for quite some time working as visual effects supervisors. This expertise shows on screen with Alien vs. Predator: Requiem where the Brothers Strause pulled double duty also working as the visual effects supervisors.

This movie was gory and done in classic Alien/Predator style. I would actually stick my neck out and say that this is perhaps better then the first AvP. That being said, I do have a few critiques. My biggest criticism is that the entire film was too dark. It was very difficult to distinguish one figure from the next on screen. It’s hard to really enjoy a movie if you don’t know what’s going on.

I would also say that while the general story was good, there were too many plot devices. The story had too many places to go with the human characters and I would have liked to see the focus more on the Aliens and Predators. If they had focused more on the Alien/Predator aspect, some underdeveloped parts of the plot could have been more fully explained.

Despite my problems with this movie, I did enjoy it. I guess I’m just waiting for an AvP film to draw me in like Aliens. I would suggest this film for any fans of the genre and series. Little kids might be frightened or disturbed by the monster aspect of it. I will watch it again when it’s out on DVD.