I’m too macho to request backup.
When a movie as apparently predictable as the sequel to Alien vs. Predator (2004)[1], the mundanely named Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007), comes along, it requires some extra pizzazz, or it risks becoming … no, let me replace a couple of words there: it BECOMES a dreary movie in which the audience must invent its own methods for enlivening the proceedings.
This usually takes us down the path of drinking games, of counting up casualties, of laying bets on which characters won’t make it, and how they’ll meet their demise.
The pizzazz? It can be unexpected ripples in the plot, morbid humor, inventive dialog, even making the movie into a musical done to the tunes of The Pirates of Penzance (although that might be a trifle cliched in the wake of The Simpsons send up of the Broadway classic) – or brave writers would take it down a path no one expects. Such as finding a way to let the humans be players in the game, rather than simply bumpers in a big pinball game.
In this movie, they’re the bumpers.
This movie is tied tightly to the previous movie in this mashup franchise, which ended with the body of a Predator, killed by an Alien in Antarctica, being placed on a Predator spaceship, presumably for return to their home. As this movie breaks out, unknown to the crew, an Alien managed to lay eggs in the dead Predator. Why the Predator crew didn’t check on this, I don’t know. Anyways, the eggs hatch, the crew is heroically slaughtered, and the ship crashes back on Earth, where the surviving Aliens, all apparently mothers, hie off for the nearest Coloradan town. A Predator on another planet is alerted to the situation by the ship’s automated systems, and he decides to take care of the problem himself. Herself. Whatever.
Meanwhile, hapless human townpeople start disappearing, becoming home to eggs, and dying in incredibly short order. The aforementioned Predator arrives and starts to hunt, the police are fighting and dying in droves against anything in sight, then comes the National Guard, and then they start doing the drove thing, too. Eventually, while the characters we didn’t really bond with are fighting to get out or are waiting for evacuation, the American military nukes the joint.
There’s little to surprise the observant audience here, although the writers do cross a boundary by letting the Aliens gain access to a hospital, where the infants’ ward and the expectant mothers’ ward become the equivalent of Chicken McNuggets. That caught me by surprise, but it only made me ill – it didn’t arouse sympathy, horror, terror, ennui, or even vague sleepiness.
So, all this said, I will give it a prop. A very small prop. It’s better than the first movie in the franchise. Alien vs. Predator was incredibly superficial, involving some mysterious monstrous artifact buried in Antarctica. At least this time we’re in a town where we can see people reacting. And dying. The Monster invades a small American town trope has been overdone, and this version does little to set the bar higher.
If horror is your thing, maybe you’ll enjoy this. I enjoyed Alien (1979) and Predator (1987) quite a lot. But not this mashup. Indeed, we speculated partway through how a polar bear might have done against an Alien. I guess our minds were wandering.
1For anyone unfamiliar with the classic SF horror movies Alien (and its sequel, Aliens) or Predator, their eponymous namesakes are alien monsters that are super predators. The former have flailing limbs, acidic blood, and a predilection for laying eggs in living bodies, much like certain varieties of wasps lay eggs in paralyzed tarantulas so that when the little buggers hatch, living meat is available for their first meal. Ugh. The latter monsters have interstellar spaceflight, body armor with automated weapons, NRA memberships, and a liking for skinning most of their game. For both, the concept of inter-species relations consists mostly of mutual complete destruction.
