By Kofi Outlaw
AVP-R is not so much a movie as a collage of gruesome death scenes. Normally this would be a bad thing—however the truth, in this particular case, is that gruesome death scenes are exactly what you’re paying to see. A lack of gruesome death scenes was exactly the sort of folly that marked the original AVP as a tragic case of missed opportunity.
AVP-R begins just where the original AVP left off: with a Predator scout ship departing earth, their slain brother in tow. Just when all seems at peace again, a Predator/Alien hybrid pops out of the dead Predator’s chest. Somehow Pred-Alien reaches maturity so quickly (loophole alert!) that he is able to slaughter all the Predators on board the ship and send the vessel crashing back to Earth.
The ship lands in a range of mountains just outside of Colorado. The Pred-Alien, and a couple of surviving face-grabbers escape the wreckage, quickly pouncing upon an unsuspecting hunter and his young son, who happen to be closeby in the woods. New Aliens hatch from the unfortunate victims, and more face-grabbers escape into the sewers, infecting a group of homeless vagrants, thereby adding to the Alien’s ranks.
Back on the Predator’s home planet, a distress call from the fallen ship is received and assessed through some cool alien video technology. When a champion Predator learns of the Pred-Alien’s existence, he sets off for Earth alone, to clean up the mess before the Aliens can overrun the planet.
In the small mountain town, residents are going about their daily routine, unaware of the catastrophe brewing out in the woods. We meet a stock of “main characters” including a reformed convict recently released on parole; his hot-head younger brother; hot-head younger brother’s blonde-bombshell crush, who is dating the town bully; a female Army officer, returning from her tour in the Middle East; and the kindly town sheriff, who knows everybody by name, but is far from being any kind of John McClane.
When the hunter and his son are pronounced missing, search teams set out combing the woods. One unfortunate deputy happens upon the ship’s crash site just as the Predator hunter is covering up the scene, using some blue liquid that liquefies everything it touches. The Predator quickly dispatches the deputy and, as is the ritual, skins him alive and hangs him feet-first from a tree. Once the kindly sheriff catches a glimpse of his deputy’s mangled body, the panic begins.
What next ensues is, as I said, really just a collage of gruesome death scenes. Our stock of main characters narrowly escapes onslaught after onslaught, with the “human drama” mercifully broken up by sequences of the Predator tracking and battling his true prey, the Aliens. The monsters’ ferocious battle destroys the local power plant, plunging the town into darkness. The National Guard is called in—only to get taken out—while a hospital maternity ward becomes a nesting ground for a horde of Aliens. As the town begins to fall, the evil corporate interests behind the first AVP incident lure the surviving townspeople to the town square, promising rescue. In actuality the corporate powers hope to quell the incident by nuking the town, and dispatch a jet to deliver the payload. Some of the main characters (specifically the army lady and the two brothers,) get hip to the deception and opt for plan B: braving the hospital to reach the helipad, where a chopper will transport them to safety.
Of course only a fateful few ever reach the chopper, making their escape while the Predator and the Pred-Alien duke it out in a final showdown. The chopper escapes the the nuke blast, and the surviving characters live to see another sunrise. The film ends with a perplexing “cliffhanger,” where the evil corporate powers convene to ogle a Predator plasma cannon recovered from the site, which they plot to use in some kind of extraterrestrial campaign I’m guessing we’ll see in AVP 3, god willing.
It’s not entirely fair to review AVP-R according to any traditional standard of movie critiquing. As I said, it’s not so much a film as a collage of gruesome death scenes. In terms of slaughter no stone is left unturned, so to speak: men, women, children, law enforcement officials, horny teenagers, waitresses, the elderly, the homeless, newborn infants, (a lot of) pregnant ladies, Predators, Aliens, dogs—everybody buys it in this flick. And the deaths are not pretty. If someone ever bothers to tally the body count (nerds, looking at you,) it will be pretty hefty.
The filmmaking is good enough for the subject matter, as are the second-tier special effects, and the third-tier performances turned in by the wholly forgettable cast. But then, you probably shouldn’t expect character development and emotional resonance from people who are basically there to serve as panicked livestock.
The real stars of the film are the Aliens, the Predator, and the Pred-Alien. The directors of AVP-R, credited as “The Brothers Strause,” have their creepy-creatures looking up to par. They opt for animatronics for most of the Alien sequences, employing CGI far more sparingly than the original AVP did. Actor Ian Whyte, to his credit, somehow brings depth to the Predator; the lone hunter is by far the most compelling character to watch, despite having zero lines of dialogue.
Bottom line: the only people who ever go to see a movie like AVP-R are those who know, and desire, exactly what that sort of sci-fi creature-feature promises to deliver. The original AVP teased us with the showdown cult fans had been waiting years to see, only to pull the rug out from under us with a soft-boiled, over-plotted, mess of a film. AVP-R gets it right the second time around by keeping it simple: a whole lot of Aliens, one kick-ass Predator, and a whole lot of unlucky, overwhelmed, humans stuck in the middle. If that sounds like a good time to you, you won’t be disappointed with AVP-R.