Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem

(Cert 15)

1 / 5

Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem
ETs go home ... Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem

The world's most illogical and boring action-horror grudge-match between two dull trademarked franchise monsters is back on. The long-standing niggle between these extra-terrestrial beasties has once again flared up, which is pretty bad news for everyone. Aliens Vs Predator has returned for Round Two, and its directors, former SFX specialists the Krause brothers, have shown in the title that they, like Mozart and Gabriel Fauré before them, are apparently exploring the "requiem" concept. So the eternal struggle between Aliens and Predator has more grandeur and cultural resonance this time around.

  1. Alien vs Predator: Requiem
  2. Production year: 2007
  3. Country: USA
  4. Cert (UK): 18
  5. Runtime: 86 mins
  6. More on this film

Anyway, the Latinism of the title should alert us to the frankly awe-inspiring possibility that this is their final, cataclysmic encounter. Or, gulp, is it? The slobbering, teeth-baring, tummy-bursting Aliens and the snarling Predator from the Arnie-in-the-jungle action package have once again kicked off, this time on Planet Earth where the poor humans are not directly targeted but are nonetheless in great danger as innocent bystanders.

There are moments that abjectly seek to recreate the magic of the original: Aliens jump suckingly on to people's faces and snarl up-close-and-personal at women doing some sub-Sigourney sobbing. It's an almost Weimar-style devaluation of dramatic impact. The Aliens and Predator are equally yucky, and confusingly there is a sort of cross-breed this time called the Predalien - not the result of sexual intercourse, though there's no reason not to have a bit of a Romeo-and-Juliet situation between an Alien guy and Predator girl. No, it's just a question of the aliens doing their cheeky parasitic thing actually inside Predator. (I don't remember the Alien from the first film coming out looking like John Hurt. Or, come to think of it, perhaps it did.)

Predator himself, with his conceited quasi-dreadlock hair extensions, has evidently modelled himself on 1990s football star Ruud Gullit. But perhaps it is time to extend this face-off principle to other kinds of cinema. We could have an action-horror with Keira Knightley from Atonement battling Helena Bonham Carter from A Room With a View, the delicate porcelain of their English complexions flecked with spittle and blood as their jaws extend into slavering mandibles, from which lesser rows of teeth would extend as they rampaged around the Tuscan countryside fanatically trying to kill each other. Or perhaps Keisha Castle-Hughes from Whale Rider could take on Anna Paquin from The Piano. Or Thomas Sangster from Love Actually versus Haley Joel Osment from The Sixth Sense.

Suffice it to say, the elemental contest between Aliens and Predator is so massive that when the US army drops a nuclear bomb on the quarantined area where they are scrapping, this detonation is hardly noticed. And there is no CND-style whingeing from the various hotties and babes in the cast when the truth about this nuclear holocaust is casually revealed to them. Taking on Aliens and Predator, as they take on each other, is an aid to stoicism.

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