Cast:
Steven Pasquale (Dallas Howard), Reiko Aylesworth (Kelly O'Brien), John Ortiz (Eddie Morales), Johnny Lewis (Ricky Howard), Sam Trammell (Tim O'Brien), Ariel Gade (Molly O'Brien), Robert Joy (Colonel Stevens), Kristen Hager (Jesse Salinger), David Paetkau (Dale Collins), Matt Ward (Mark), Michal Suchánek (Nick), David Hornsby (Drew Roberts), and Gina Holden (Carrie Adams) Directed by The Brothers Strause.
Review:
You remember Alien vs. Predator (2004), don't you? The crossover movie between Alien and Predator that ended up being more average than Alien: Resurrection (or perhaps a predicator of further predictable fare like Predators) Well, if you liked seeing Paul W. S. Anderson cobble together a story with Ronald Shusett and Dan O'Bannon, too bad, the sequel just has Shane Salerno, who had given a re-write to the prior movie to go along with his occasional contribution to scripts for films such as Armageddon (1998). Oh, and now the director is a pair of brothers named Greg and Colin Strause. The brothers were born in Waukegan, Illinois but were raised in Chicago. They liked to experiment with computers from a young age, such as with the Amiga computer, and they convinced their parents that a Silicon Graphics Indy processor and software was something they wanted to work on and use for their interests in effects. This led to them moving to California in the 1990s (with inspiration for making movies coming from Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) along with making their own company with Hydraulx, which did work for 20th Century Fox productions such as Volcano (1997) and The X-Files (1998). They also did music videos (like for the song "Californication") and commercials. So, when it came time to do a sequel of "AVP" without the service of Anderson, it should only make sense that Fox thought the Strause brothers would be suitable to carry an effects show for the sequel, and they were hired in 2006 for an eight-week shoot to direct their first ever feature, and it should be noted that they had pitched their own version of Alien vs. Predator years before that was rejected.
For reference, I watched the 101-minute unrated cut of the movie, although the theatrical release was only 94 minutes (rated R). If you thought that the first film took things a bit far with ridiculous spectacle, the sequel only proves to embiggen the failures present in the prior movie. Now one gets to see creatures in the old familiar format: in the dark, but not as clever as earlier and better movies, where perpetual rain falls down for the climax that might as well make me wish I had a shower less predictable than this movie - even the lead character from the last one would've been a more useful focus to return to. I get having actors that aren't exactly household names, but I just can't get behind a movie that is murky as hell to watch, where the one bright (subjectively speaking) sequence is a scene in a hospital. Yes, the movie actually features people in a hospital (and babies) having an encounter with the creatures. The scene may be disturbing, but it also might be the only noteworthy scene in the movie (complete with a pregnant woman involved), one that has the bright idea of introducing multiple plot threads of people with no sense of depth or interest besides being inevitable creature fodder. You know what would have been better? Throwing your action figures in a box while pouring ketchup all over it. There just isn't anything to draw on with Pasquale or Aylesworth, who might as well be playing broom-sticks when it comes to leads that are there just to engage in action and other things that are possibly too flat for name actors to get going. The focus is on the creatures and the "Predalien", but it kind of just falls by the wayside in generating actual curiosity for these creatures beside saying "well, they look nice, so?" It is like taking a rusty old car (i.e. the equivalent of the first movie) and giving it a paint job that somehow broke all the windows. Honestly, nuking the town in the climax is probably an apt description for what happens in the movie, since plans for a third film (complete with awful sequel-baiting) were scuttled despite its marginal success at the box office. In the end, one would best skip this hodgepodge of boredom.
Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment