Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem

Another lobotomy of the alien race, accompanied this time by exquisitely bad performances from the people of Earth. The creative duo of Greg and Colin Strause deserves respect for not restarting anything and dutifully picking up where Paul W.S. Anderson so haltingly left off, but apart from the impressive Predalien, nothing of what they do is entertaining. The respectable gaming and comic book series remains cursed in terms of film. (20/01/2013)

I didn't expect anything extraordinary from this, yet the result negatively surprised me. Even in the context of the genre, it's a desperately clichéd spectacle that resigns to nothing more than a run-of-the-mill shooter that steals from the sci-fi genre. It is definitely not a horror or sci-fi, just a cheap action movie. I don't know the budget they had, but the majority of the film is drowned in darkness, and such poor lighting is quite rare - only a total blackout at the production site could excuse this. The editing is chaotic, at times the viewer has no idea who is shooting at whom, who is screaming, and whose blood is splattering everywhere. I haven't seen the first film, and after watching this, I have no desire to. I get the feeling that after this discrediting of the subject matter, no one will ever make Alien 5... Overall impression: 10%. (20/01/2009)

It's as if you were walking around a fair's House of Horror with exclusive exhibits, but you couldn't see anything because there’s a blackout. In the night scenes (which make up two-thirds of the film), the Straus brothers deliver confusingly edited action sequences drowned in darkness, in which many times you have no idea who is killing whom, who is shooting at whom, and whether this creature is a predator or an alien boss. The brothers prove with their script that they can squeeze some water out of a rock, but they shouldn’t have got behind the camera. (20/04/2008)

The script is great for this type of film, even though it lacks original ideas and the characters are not depicted in detail, but it’s action packed and without any boring moments. What the directors made from it, however, is sadly a different story. The hard to follow, badly edited action scenes, which make up about 80% of the movie, look like a direct-to-DVD C-movie with Michael Paré. Especially the shootouts with the army will make you shake your head in disbelief. That’s too bad, because the decent production values and cult status of Aliens and Predator put together could have amounted to a spectacular B-movie. (02/01/2008)

I had the same problem as with the first one: it became boring after a few minutes. That’s surprising because there’s something going on almost all the time – the aliens killing someone or fighting with the predator – but it’s executed in such a sterile and dull way that it almost makes you sad when you imagine how it could have been if… If the action scenes weren’t confusing, if the characters uttered sensible dialogues, if the extraterrestrial monsters were shown in full at least for a bit, or if it focused more on the atmosphere – in other words, if someone else had directed. The final impression is a little bit better than with the first one, but still weak. AvP 3 this time in space and without Straus, please. (31/01/2008)