Official Synopsis:
Packed with adrenaline-pumping action, heart-stopping suspense, plus seven additional minutes of unrated, blood-soaked footage too shocking for theaters, this unrated version of AVP-Requiem escalates the war between sci-fi's scariest movie icons! After a horrifying PredAlien crash-lands near a small Colorado town, killing everyone it encounters and producing countless Alien offspring, a lone Predator arrives to "clean up" the infestation. Soon it's an all-out battle to the death with no rules, no mercy - and hundreds of innocent people caught in the crossfire. As the creature carnage continues, a handful of human survivors attempt a daring escape, but the U.S. government may be hatching a deadly plan of its own...

  
Our Take:
On the surface, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem. In fact, I would say it’s definitely better than the first AVP film. So why didn’t I like it more?

Aliens: one of my favorite franchises of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.

Predator: One of my favorite franchises of the 90’s.

Aliens Vs. Predator: Mediocre sci-fi action movies that just can’t seem to capture the greatness of the individual films.

I really don’t know how to explain it. In AVP: R, directors Colin and Greg Strause actually took the time to develop characters (cookie cutter as they may be), built the creature suspense slowly, and then finished with a huge climactic battle. The special effects are pretty awesome, some of the action scenes are pretty cool, and there are even some actors I like in the cast. Plus, the PredAlien is pretty neat. So what’s missing? (Besides James Cameron or John McTiernan, obviously.)

I don’t have an answer for that. I can’t point to any one thing about AVP: R that I disliked per se, but I can’t say I really enjoyed the film all that much, either. At best, it’s a somewhat fun piece of escapist entertainment. If I had to point out one flaw, it would be the editing. As is the norm these days, it’s so overdone and hyperkinetic that during the huge alien vs. predator match-ups, it’s often hard to figure out what you’re looking at on screen. When are movie directors going to rediscover the beauty of slow motion?

Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem comes to DVD as both an Unrated single disc and an Unrated two-disc release. Unfortunately, for the purposes of this review, we only received the single disc edition. Here’s what’s included on it:

- Full-Length Audio Commentary by Directors Colin and Greg Strause and Producer John Davis.
- Full-Length Audio Commentary by Creature Effects Designers/Creators Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, Jr.
- Added Footage Marker – Lets you see what footage makes the cut unrated.
- Theatrical Trailers.

Poorly timed to release at Christmas, Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem doesn’t even have the big box office to deliver another sequel, thereby extinguishing hope that we might still someday get a really great chapter in this franchise. For now, it looks like this is all we get.

Overall Picture:
Movie: C
DVD: B-

- Mike Spring

Editor