Reel Talk: Alien Vs. Predator
By Audrey Rock
Transcript Bulletin Film Critic


The makers of "Alien Vs. Predator" could have taken a cue from last summer’s monster match up, "Freddy Vs. Jason," and left well enough alone. Freddy was a perfectly respectable horror icon by himself; Jason did a decent job by himself; but together they became two non-frightening, blood-spattering cartoon caricatures. And had its creators embraced that approach, making a campy tongue-in-cheek movie, it might have worked. But they didn’t. They tried to scare us for real.

AVP makes the same mistake, damaging it’s own credibility by playing it straight instead of going for camp appeal. There’s just no other way to successfully match two iconic monsters in a gimmicky duel.

The film stars a bunch of non-recognizable faces, which gives the whole picture a generic feel. But a non-recognizable cast in and of itself isn’t what causes the “generic” feeling. It’s the fact that none of these new faces is what you’d call “fresh.” Bryce Dallas Howard was a new face in "The Village"—but she was such an invigorating new presence, she lifted the whole film instead of simply blending into it.

So a bunch of generic shampoo-commercial-type actors go on a quest, the goal being some kind of archaeological nonsense. The destination is an ancient pyramid in Antarctica. After a grueling buildup, Alien and Predator finally show up on the scene, bringing every single horror cliché in the book with them.

The faux scientist expedition people explore the pyramid and exchange short, meaningless communications like “Take a look at this”; “It’s all starting to make sense”; “You want a piece of me?” and “You OK?”

One by one, the members of the expedition die violently. But it’s not people Alien and Predator are after. They’re after each other. The faux scientists have been caught in the middle of a war between many aliens and many predators.

Warning: I’m giving away some significant spoilers in the next paragraph, but only so you can make an educated decision on whether or not you really want to spend good money and time on this film.

The expedition’s leader, the beautiful but stern Alexa Woods (Sanaa Lathan), does her best to lead everyone to safety, but in the end, there’s only Alexa and Predator. So, in an ingenious stroke of plotline idiocy, she makes friends with Predator and shares what could be interpreted as romantic moments with him.

No, I’m not kidding. On the bright side, viewing AVP might be considered effective punishment for certain crimes. It’s so terribly edited, I wasn’t even sure I was supposed to be scared. The only feeling I experienced while watching this film very closely resembled seasickness.

And the PG-13 rating attached to this gore-fest is yet more evidence that the MPAA is pretty much worthless. You’ve got to figure out what’s appropriate all by yourself, because they’re not going to help you.

This movie gets an F+, because it did such a good job of failing, following all the rules necessary to make one truly worthless movie. Any movie that wants to fail successfully should just look to AVP as a model. It sports a loud, circus-like score; a boring cast; a cliché-ridden script; terrible acting; slimy gross-out violence; and funny moments that were meant to be serious and/or frightening. And that is exactly what you’ll get for full ticket price.

Grade: F