Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem

2007

Directed by David Zucker

Welcome back to Movie Monday, folks! We’re continuing our journey through my personal hall of shame, aka the worst movies I’ve ever had the misfortune of watching. Remember, this is all based on my opinion, so your mileage may vary. Today, we’re diving into the murky depths of 2007’s sci-fi action flick, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. Buckle up, because this ride is about to get bumpy… and really, really dark.

Spoiler Warning: This movie is old enough to drive in some states, but if you’ve somehow avoided it for 17 years and still want to preserve the “magic,” proceed with caution.

The Setup

Picture this: It’s 2007. The first Alien vs. Predator movie has just hit theaters, and despite its PG-13 rating (a far cry from the R-rated originals), it’s actually pretty entertaining. So naturally, when Requiem was announced with an R rating, hopes were high. “Finally,” we thought, “we’re going to get the no-holds-barred alien-on-predator action we’ve been craving!”

Oh, sweet summer children. If only we knew.

The Plot

Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem picks up right where the first AVP left off. A Predator ship is leaving Earth with some Alien facehuggers and a dead Predator onboard. But wait! There’s a twist! A Predalien (yes, you read that right) bursts out of the dead Predator’s chest, because apparently, we needed to make this franchise even more convoluted.

The ship crashes near a small town in Colorado, releasing facehuggers and the Predalien. Meanwhile, on the Predator homeworld, a skilled Predator named Wolf (not to be confused with the guy from Pulp Fiction) receives a distress signal and decides to clean up the mess.

What follows is a confusing jumble of storylines involving ex-convicts, army veterans, high school swimmers, and a pregnant woman, all trying to survive as Aliens overrun their town and Wolf the Predator hunts them down.

The Good, The Bad, and The Invisible

Let’s start with the good: …I’ll get back to you on that.

Now, onto the bad. Where do I even begin?

1. The Lighting: Remember when I said this movie was dark? I wasn’t kidding. It’s like the directors, The Brothers Strause, forgot to pay the electric bill. Half the time, you can’t even see what’s happening on screen. It’s less “atmospheric tension” and more “did someone forget to take the lens cap off?”
2. The Acting: If you’re looking for Oscar-worthy performances, you’ve come to the wrong place. The characters are about as deep as a puddle in the Sahara, and the acting ranges from wooden to “are they even trying?” It’s like they cast the entire movie from a high school drama club… and then told them to act worse.
3. The Plot: If you can follow the plot of this movie without a flowchart and a team of NASA scientists, you’re doing better than me. It’s a mess of underdeveloped storylines and characters you couldn’t care less about. By the time the military decides to nuke the town (spoiler alert, I guess?), you’ll be rooting for the bomb.
4. The Predalien: Look, I’m all for innovation, but some things just don’t need to exist. The Predalien is one of those things. It’s like someone said, “You know what would make this movie better? If we combined the two monsters into one super monster!” No. Just… no.

The Franchise Fallout

Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem sits at a comfy spot of 78 out of 100 on my personal worst movies list. That’s not just bad; that’s impressively bad. It’s the kind of bad that makes you question your life choices and wonder if you should have just stayed home and watched paint dry instead.

What’s truly disappointing is how this movie managed to take two beloved sci-fi franchises and somehow make them both worse. It’s like watching your two favorite foods get combined into something inedible. (Bacon-flavored ice cream, anyone?)

The Legacy

The film’s tagline was “This Christmas there will be no peace on Earth.” Well, they got that right. There was certainly no peace in the theater as people watched their beloved franchises get massacred on screen.

After Requiem, both the Alien and Predator franchises went their separate ways, probably realizing that their crossover experiment was about as successful as trying to teach a cat to bark. The Predator series continued with Predators in 2010, while the Alien franchise took a more… philosophical turn with Ridley Scott’s Prometheus in 2012.

Final Thoughts

Looking back, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem feels less like a movie and more like a cautionary tale about the dangers of franchise greed. It’s a perfect storm of bad decisions, from the incomprehensible plot to the literally dark cinematography.

If there’s one positive thing I can say about this movie, it’s that it makes you appreciate good sci-fi even more. After watching Requiem, even the cheesiest B-movie looks like 2001: A Space Odyssey in comparison.

So, there you have it, folks. Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem – a movie so bad, it makes you wish the Xenomorphs would burst out of your chest just so you’d have something else to focus on.

What do you think? Did you brave the darkness to watch this cinematic disaster? Or did you wisely choose to skip it? Let me know in the comments below. And remember, no matter how bad your day is going, at least you’re not stuck in a town overrun by Aliens and Predators… with the lights off.

Until next time, keep watching the skies… and maybe invest in a good flashlight, just in case.