The whole concept of the Alien Vs Predator films was flawed from the start. For them not to be totally and completely unbearable would have required genuinely brilliant story writing and film making, but instead the two ideas were just rutted against each other like two gays in a public toilet and the result was just as unpleasant.
The strap line for this film was “Whoever wins, we lose”. They got that right at least. The stage for the film is set when the Predator space ship is orbiting earth with one of their own kind gestating an Alien in a completely unsecured area right near the pilot. They’re orbiting earth at the time, for all kinds of no reason at all. When the Alien hatches, the resulting Predator/Alien hybrid kicks the Christmas out of all the Predators on board and the ship crashes into earth. A load of Alien face huggers escape, and another Predator comes to get them for some reason.

The whole plot is fairly confused. I’m not sure why the Predator species give a fuck about the Aliens being on Earth, but apparently they do, which leads me to question why they chose to be orbiting earth with them in the first place. Leaving that aside for a moment though, there really is plenty more to be irritated with. Firstly, there are too many characters. Army woman, convict guy, convict guys brother, convict guys brothers love interest, convict guys brothers love interests boyfriend, Aliens, Predator, the weird dreadlocked Predator/Alien, and a few more. Of all of those characters, exactly none of them is interesting.

But an action film is judged by its action isn’t it, so that’s really what’s important. And at this point I’m really not going to be able to offer an opinion, because I didn’t see any of the action. For some reason most of the film was shot in a sewer, or somewhere else pitch black, so basically every action scene looked almost exactly like this…

I was watching it on DVD so I turned the subtitles on in the hoping that the action scenes had them “Alien hit Predator….Predator used his weird triangle targety thing…he missed…they’re hitting each other again now…oh no acid blood”. Not to be though, just scene after scene of flickery darkness punctuated with the obligatory teenage bullshit that blights these films.

Maybe they had a really low special effects budget so just decided to show black screen and play sound effects in the hope our imagination would do the rest, or maybe they’re just unspeakable cunts, I don’t know. What I do know is that this film is a great example of bad idea, poorly executed.

At the end of this film, the Predator is fighting the Alien/Predator, and he takes his armour and guns off, just like he does in all his films. I have to ask this, why even fucking wear the armour?

(AVP2 would have been infinitely more interesting had it actually been 86 minutes of this.  Luc)

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