Alien vs Predator: Requiem might have been better left buried in the depths of the Colorado sewers it portrays so poorly.
Whisper it, but Alien vs Predator: Requiem may just be the most cinematic film of either franchise. Cinematic in the sense that it really needs to be seen in a cinema. Not to appreciate the artistry, technique and craft that went into it but because seeing it on an 8K IMAX laser/ Dolby Vision Projection is your best shot at actually being able to make out what’s happening most of the time. A film that promises the clash of two legendary creatures delivers more shadow than substance, fumbling its way through a plot that’s as dark and impenetrable as its poorly lit fight scenes, making Game Of Thrones‘ The Long Night look like The Wizard of Oz.
The story picks up where its predecessor left off with a spaceship crashing into the forests of Gunnison, Colorado, unleashing an Alien-Predator hybrid (Predalien) on the unsuspecting town. Amidst the chaos, we meet an ex-con named Dallas Howard (Steven Pasquale), his brother Ricky (Johnny Lewis), and a returning military officer, Kelly O’Brien (Reiko Aylesworth). As they try to survive the onslaught, a lone Predator arrives to clean up the mess left by the interstellar mishap.
The concept of the Predalien is, on paper, a thrilling evolution of the Alien mythology. A hybrid creature combining the brutal efficiency of the Xenomorph with the predatory intelligence of the Predator should have been a monstrous adversary capable of redefining the stakes. Instead, the film reduces this potentially iconic creation to a lumbering brute whose sole purpose seems to be contributing to the body count in increasingly absurd ways. Its design hints at the ingenuity and horror of its lineage, but the execution undermines any menace or intrigue, relegating the Predalien to a forgettable footnote in the franchise’s history.
Where the first Alien vs Predator may have underwhelmed by going easy on visceral gore, Requiem doubles down with a grim determination to be as gory and ‘edgy’ as possible. However, instead of crafting a visceral thrill ride, the film delivers a series of dimly lit set pieces that oscillate between laughable and outright tedious. Watching the action is like trying to decipher hieroglyphs with a blindfold on; the fight choreography—what little you can discern—is clunky, and the visual effects rarely rise above the standard of a mid-2000s video game cutscene.
The script, if one can even call it that, operates on autopilot, relying on horror clichés and shallow character archetypes to pad out its runtime. There’s no spark of wit, no clever dialogue, and certainly no attempt to imbue the characters with depth. They exist solely as chum, scooped out of the bucket and thrown onto the oily black surface of the film to keep up the required guignol without evoking a shred of sympathy.
What’s truly maddening is how Requiem takes two of science fiction’s most celebrated franchises and drags them, literally and figuratively, into the gutter. The cerebral horror and existential dread of Alien and the tense survivalism of Predator are abandoned in favour of a generic slasher framework that neither honours its source material nor forges a unique identity. The film pays lip service to fans with a smattering of callbacks, but these fleeting moments of recognition are buried under a mountain of mediocrity. If Alien vs Predator favoured fan service too much, Alien vs Predator: Requiem overcorrects into fan abuse.
One might be tempted to excuse some of the shortcomings as teething problems for directors Colin and Greg Strause, making their feature debut. But such leniency would overlook the sheer lack of craft on display. The lighting is abysmal, the pacing is erratic, and the tone is as inconsistent as the film’s grasp of what makes its titular creatures compelling. The decision to go for a darker, grittier aesthetic backfires spectacularly, rendering entire sequences incomprehensible. “Did that Predator just win?” you might ask, only to realise you’ve been staring at a patch of unilluminated forest for thirty seconds. It’s not without some technical merit though – it’s quite the achievement to light your film so darkly that even a nuclear explosion doesn’t shed much light on things.
Compared to its predecessors, Alien vs Predator: Requiem is a plodding misfire that comprehensively fails to recapture the grandeur or terror of its lineage. Even the oft-maligned Alien vs Predator feels like a masterpiece by comparison, at least attempting to frame its conflict with some semblance of tension and scope. Here, the stakes are localised to a handful of forgettable townsfolk, and the climactic showdown feels like watching someone drop their action figures in the dark. It’s little wonder it would take both franchises years to recover their identity and momentum from this literal showstopper.
