Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem

Dec. 26, 10 p.m., UA Riverview

by Drew Lazor

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It all happened so fast. It's a phrase often uttered by hapless mugging victims too shaken to provide an accurate physical description of their assailants. But it's also an apt phrase for describing how I felt trudging out of AVP:R, a movie so overrun with misleading setups and poor lighting that I checked for my wallet on the way out.

AVP:R picks up directly where the 2004 original left off: At the end of that movie, an alien staked a claim in a Predator's chest, setting up the inevitable conception of a "Predalien" hybrid. ("Dude, it's like ... a Jamaican martian!" exclaimed one kid behind me, who I hope was stoned.) Here, the little girl, who is not nice, wreaks havoc on a Predator space vessel hauling a bunch of alien POWs, causing it to crashland in the woods outside a presumably affluent Colorado resort town. The emancipated aliens spill out everywhere and start eating hunters, hoboes and so on, eventually driving together a scrappy group of human survivors that includes a cop, an ex-con, a hot blond who tries to talk but can't and a female Iraqi war vet. Soon, a grizzled veteran-type Predator arrives on Earth to survey the damage — and take out the traaash!

There's plenty of gruesome chomp-chomp scenes in the early going, and the action is evenly paced throughout. The problem is that "action" here refers less to a digestible good guy vs. bad guy conflict and more to a dim, impossible-to-follow flailing of arms, legs, mandibles and barbed tails. Who's that dude? What's that thing? Who's winning? In some ways, it was reminiscent of last summer's Transformers, where metal would crunch on metal and you would just shrug and throw Jujubes at Shia LaBeouf because you had no clue who was pummeling who. Granted, it's not imperative that you are able to catalog each battle blow-by-blow on a scorecard; stuff is killing other stuff, and that's why you bought a ticket. Still, one hopes that the sequel — yes, despite its absolutist subtitle, there will be a sequel — will handle the "versus" aspect of the franchise with a little more care.

Being biracial myself, I immediately felt for Lady Predalien, as identity is always an issue for us halfies. But look, chick, I never expressed my ethnic angst by impregnating an entire hospital maternity ward with parasitic alien embryos. Just talk to someone.