Directed by The Brothers Strauss
Written by Shane Salerno

Cast
Steven Pasquale as Dallas
Reiko Aylesworth as Kelly
John Ortiz as Morales
Johnny Lewis as Ricky
Ariel Gade as Molly

Rated R for violence, gore and language

So, it's come to this.  The Alien franchise has been one of the greatest in sci-fi history, starting with Ridley Scott's seminal horror classic, followed by James Cameron's immortally kick-ass Aliens and David Fincher's underrated Alien 3 (which, admittedly, managed to blow up the franchise with its' apocalyptically gloomy climax).  The bland “Poseidon Adventure with Monsters” Alien Resurrection seemed to be the final nail in the Alien coffin.  Meanwhile, John McTiernan's 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle Predator introduced a memorably cool monster who returned in the exciting Stephen Hopkins sequel Predator 2, a box office flop.  While the rest of the world moved on, comic book and video game companies hit on the same idea Universal Studios did during their monster heyday:  if a couple of creatures can no longer sell tickets on their own, make 'em fight!  And soon enough, Hollywood got on the Alien vs. Predator bandwagon with the enjoyably junky 2004 movie of the same name.  While it lacked the starpower or ambition of its' predecessors, at least it had cool monsters, relatable human characters, and a show-stopping action climax full of sound and fury.  For their follow-up, 20th Century Fox has taken the next page from the Universal Monsters playbook;  cut the budget!  Handing the baton to debuting directors The Brothers Strauss (what's with all the cutsey billing of writing/directing duos lately?), and offering them barely enough money to turn on the lights, the studio drives a stake into the hearts of two of their most popular creations with the utterly awful bargain basement glorified direct-to-video rematch Aliens vs. Predator:  Requiem.  While I've no idea what the title is intended to reference, the film sings a sad song indeed to fans who've been waiting over 20 years to finally see the Aliens wreck havoc on Earth.

Alien vs. Predator ended (AvP SPOILER ALERT!) with a newborn Alien busting out of the chest of the Predator who'd defeated its' mommy.  It doesn't take long for the creature (an Alien/Predator hybrid the press materials call a Predalien) to kill the crew and bring down the spaceship carrying it, which crashes just outside of a small town.  There, a hunter and his young son discover it and are attacked by face huggers the Predators, in their infinite wisdom, were carrying on board.  Meanwhile (forgive me while I stiffle a giggle fit), video of this calamity has been beamed back to the Predator home world, where it's watched by some dude we'll call the Cigarette Smoking Predator (for reasons which will shortly become clear; typical of the movie's imagination, the credits list him as “Predator”).  With a flourish, he slaps on his armor, hops into a ship and heads for a planet called... Earth.  By this time, the hunter and his kid have busted open and released more aliens and our planet can officially be considered under attack.  Alas, we still have time to get to know some locals.  Dallas (Steven Pasquale) has just gotten out of jail, and touches base with his old friend Sherrif Morales (John Ortiz).  Dallas's younger brother, high school student Ricky (Johnny Lewis), is obsessed with local hottie Jesse (Kristen Hager), who seems to return his affections in between dating Jock Lunkhead Dale (David Paetkau).  Meanwhile, Kelly (Reiko Aylesworth, a long way from 24) has just returned from... somewhere (we'll assume from her fatigues that it was Iraq), and is struggling to reconnect with her daughter Molly (Ariel Gade).  As search parties begin to scour the woods for the missing hunter and his son, the CSP arrives on Earth, blows up the crashed ship, and begins seeking out both aliens and their victims to pour some kind of acidic Dawn dishwashing liquid over them to destroy the evidence (for whose benefit???) in a positively Rumsfeldian plan to wipe out one Alien at a time while their plague spreads across the countryside like wildfire.  People, meet Aliens.  Aliens, meet Predator.  People, meet Predator.  Let the running, screaming, and fighting begin.

Aliens vs. Predator:  Requiem (gotta love the extra “s” in the title, seemingly designed to make it stick to the roof of your mouth like peanut butter) is pretty much exactly the same as a lesser creature-on-the-loose Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie except for the fact that the monsters have a more famous lineage.  What they lack is the budget to do anything compared with their previous highlights, and the majority of the film occurs in cheap, cheap darkness after a power outage combines with pouring rain to make it impossible to see much of anything.  There are literally times when I could not tell if the creature lurking behind a tree/window/sheet of plastic was an Alien, a Predator, a Predalien or a guy in a black bunny suit.  And the vast majority of the copious AvP action is shot so murkily and edited so quickly that it's hard to tell what we're looking at let alone why we should care which monster prevails.  Of course, because the title is highly accurate, there is only one Predator and more Aliens than you can shake a stick at, so he pretty much routs them each and every time:  this from a species that once got its' ass kicked by Danny Glover!

The much-ballyhooed Predalien falls somewhere between icky (its' newly minted means of reproduction) and lame (never before has a creature in this franchise looked so much like a guy in a suit, and its' combination of A and P characteristics isn't exactly elegant):  even then its' barely discernible in all the darkness that conceals its' cut-rate nature.  But the real laugh riot triumph of the film is the CSP:  with his bottomless vial of evidence-destroying blue liquid and “Fanboy in a Predator costume” overacting (sorry, Ian Whyte, who's kinda reprising his role from the original AvP), he's the surest sign that this franchise has remained in the fridge long past its' expiration date.  Funniest of all is the way, before a climactic fight with the Predalien, he makes a show of taking off his mask to reveal his face.  I half expected the P/A to let out a subtitled gasp of shock:  “You!”

Of course, if we're left to wonder about what sort of clandestine Predator government agency the CSP might get his motivation from, it's no different than any of his human counterparts, who mostly get a single generic scene to introduce themselves before being either munched or getting their running shoes on.  Aylesworth fares best, in part because she's got the closest thing to a role.  Pasquale is OK, but I have to say I was surprised to learn that he's a working actor with a regular gig on Rescue Me.  Ortiz (also a former Denis Leary co-star, from The Job) does what he can with an underwritten part, while Robert Joy oozes stock menace as a government heavy around to deliver an out-of-left-field attempt to shoehorn all this into the existing Alien/Predator timeline in the final scene.  Lewis and Hagar are not only playing utterly lame high school stereotypes, but they're routed by their obviously advanced ages (Lewis looks every one of his 24 years:  I couldn't find an official age on Hagar, but it's not a good sign that I initially thought she might be one of Ricky's teachers).

I suppose the Brothers thought they were setting a tone of “no one is safe” menace by brutally offing a young boy in the opening scenes, but it, along with subsequent attacks on babies and a pregnant woman, actually has the opposite effect:  since anyone can die, one is pretty sure that EVERYONE will.  I'm sure Aylesworth, a casualty of 24's bloodlust just like 95% of the characters who've ever appeared on that increasingly unsuspenseful show, can tell you all about the diminishing returns of leaving no one safe.  That also leaches into a subplot with Joy advising the survivors to gather in the town square for an airlift to safety.  Can anyone watching the movie have any doubt what's actually coming in that plane, particularly after one poor fool says “The government doesn't lie to people!”?  The film's too-cool fatalism makes it impossible to care about anybody because they're all just mannequins set up to be knocked down by quick cuts to murky closeups of guys in Alien suits.

There's barely any intentional entertainment at all within AvP:R's mercifully brief running time.  The Brothers Strauss have no idea how to stage a monster attack, and I only even twitched twice.  There's one mildly poignant reaction shot once the “airlift” arrives, and of course it is fun to laugh at the expense of the old kids and the goofy CSP.  But this is surely the year's most unnecessary movie, adding nothing to the legendary mythology of its' characters or the resumes of the actors with the misfortune to appear in it.  As for the Brothers Strauss (Colin and Greg, for the record), I suspect that their next directing job will involve a giant snake and a former cast member of Stargate:  SG-1.