AVPR: Aliens vs Predator – Requiem
Director: Colin Strause, Greg Strause
Writer: Shane Salerno
Sequel to: Alien vs Predator
Spin-off from: the Alien movies, the Predator movies
Cast: Steven Pasquale, Reiko Aylesworth, John Ortiz, Johnny Lewis, Ariel Gade, Kristen Hager, Sam Trammell, Robert Joy, David Paetkau, Tom Woodruff Jr., Ian Whyte
Seen on: 24.2.2023

Plot:
After the fight with the Aliens in the Antarctic, the Predator tries to leave Earth but is attacked by an Alien instead and crashes on Earth again, bringing pandemonium down over a small town in Colorado. With xenomorphs and facehuggers everywhere, the humans of the town need to band together if they want any chance of survival. But the Predators have also realized what happened and are sending reinforcements.

AVPR: Aliens vs Predator – Requiem is the rare film that is so utterly bland that one month after watching it, I have already trouble recalling anything about it. Does that necessarily make it a bad film? No. Is it any good? Also no.

AVPR is about as smart as that abbreviation included in its title – instead of making things shorter, sharper, it just makes things more complicated and unwieldy. And so the film thinks that it’s doing something very clever when it introduces a shitton of characters because then you can kill off so many people! Only that we never spend enough time with any of them to actually give a damn when anyone gets killed.

And the kills aren’t exciting either. There are some moments where I thought the film wanted to shock – the death of a child and an alien invasion in a maternity wary – but I couldn’t be bothered to be disgusted, entertained, surprised or anything really. I watched as if in a stupor, shrugging about everything.

The titular battle between Aliens and Predator were mainly shot in the dark, and the lack of visibility contributed nothing to the film. It didn’t build tension, it just underscored how much the film lacks of it. If only there were some characters to relate to, to get somewhat invested in their survival. But the callousness with which the film treats its characters makes this pretty much impossible.

I really didn’t expect much of the film, seeing that I didn’t particularly like the first one either, but the film managed to disappoint even that lack of expectations.

Summarizing: don’t waste your time on it.