SCI FI PI

Released Jan 1
Starring Reiko Aylesworth, Steven Pasquale
Director The Brothers Strause
Rated MA 15+



This is a requiem indeed – for the death of a franchise.

You’d have more fun sticking your hand down an ant’s nest than watching this – it’s a logic fricassee that replaces tension and originality with comic-book stupidity.

If you’ve seen all the Alien movies and the Predator movies and even Alien Versus Predator, you may be forgiven for wanting to go and see Requiem. Let us save you the money and the agony by suggesting you go see something else.

It is so bad it even manages to pervert your memories of good (well at least better) films, as it provides shot for shot ‘homages’ from the previous films: alien face sticks into shot, girl pulls away: Alien 3, alien in water: Alien 4, alien in sewer: Aliens etc and so forth ad nauseam. What’s lacking is build up of tension, use of realistic characters and subtle references to a larger world: Alien.

The result – it’s extremely boring. Imagine that, making a full-on, no holds barred hunt of Aliens led by a lethal Predalien by a badass Predator in the middle of a small Colorado town, boring.

Somehow, the Brothers Strause have done it. None of the characters are even remotely real, and (given previous mythology) the compression of time for some of the action is idiotic. Bizarre coincidences and character behaviour are laughable at best, but at worst, teeth-grindingly irritating: i.e., after a power-outage caused by a Predator hunter blowing up a power station, a girl goes into a blackened restaurant to tell her friend that there’s a power outage, which is hard for her, because the entire town is dark due to… a power outage!

The film does have some positives if you’re intent on causing damage to yourself by watching it.

The comic book heritage of the AVP mythology is front and centre with a specific look to all of the film, lots of visible light beams and silhouettes and a highly chromatic palette make this film look great. There’s some glimpses of the Predator home world - which is undeniably excellent.

The Predalian is well constructed, and there are some really good Predator gadgets and gadget effects. The final Predalian versus predator showdown (whilst extremely silly) provides a couple of good moments.

Stars Steven Pasquale (you may have seen him Denis Leary’s top-notch Rescue Me) and Reiko Aylesworth from 24, prove themselves worthy by passing the Henriksen test. They, like Lance Henriksen, can obviously appear in any god-awful crap and emerge unscathed, although the final cheesy shot of Aylesworth (right out of the cheesy unoriginal Sci Fi shots playbook) is stunningly bad.

It is this sort of stupidity and unoriginality that really mars the film. Logic seems to have been something that was entirely irrelevant to the filmmakers, and as such there is no chance for any kind of human connection with the film in terms of either plot or character. It’s merely a string of vaguely connected moments that revive memories of the previous films and try to recreate the excitement of the well received comics. In both cases, it has failed, and failed miserably. If you are the person who liked this film, please let us know, we would like to study your brain.