Alien vs. Predator-Requiem (Blu-ray) (2007)

"...a brisk, gooey bit of schlock that's a million times better than 2004's action-lite AVP.  Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly
"...brings serious chills as the Predalien invades a maternity ward to lay its eggs, recalling the birth and motherhood anxieties of the Alien franchise.  Jamie Russell, BBC Online

Editor's Note ALIEN VS. PREDATOR relegated its intergalactic grudge match to Antarctica, keeping most of humankind gleefully ignorant. This time around, though, the destruction takes place in suburban America, and those who have been waiting for it finally get to witness facehuggers, alien hybrids, and the dreadlocked Predator wreak some homeland havoc. Directors Colin and Greg Strause (billed as "The Brothers Strause") don't seem concerned with achieving the tension of the original ALIEN and PREDATOR films, instead using their visual effects backgrounds to create a steady stream of monsters, gore, and goo. Picking up where AVP ended, REQUIEM sees Predator on a homebound spacecraft when a baby alien/Predator hybrid bursts from his chest, causing the ship to crash in the Colorado woods. Several facehugger specimens escape, planting eggs down the throats of a hunter and his son. Soon, baby aliens emerge from their bodies and head for town, where ex-con Dallas (Steven Pasquale), Iraq War vet Kelly (Reiko Aylesworth), pizza delivery boy Ricky (Johnny Lewis), high school heartthrob Jesse (Kristen Hager), and sheriff Morales (John Ortiz) have their own separate encounters with the creatures. The dead Predator's home planet receives a transmission of the alien outbreak, and a fellow denizen of his world is dispatched to clean up the multiplying aliens, eventually causing enough death and destruction for government intervention. This is essentially a slasher film (or FREDDY VS. JASON with aliens), and the characters in REQUIEM are secondary to the creature effects. Fans of the comic books and videogames will appreciate the Strauses? adherence to the lore of the series, but others will probably just find thrills in the copious special effects, which are frequent and well-done (if often occurring in darkness). There is also a significant amount of indiscriminant gore in this rightfully R-rated film. A government conspiracy plot thread and an ambiguous ending ensure that this battle isn't over yet.

	Ariel Gade
	John Ortiz
	Reiko Aylesworth
	Steven Pasquale
	Andrew Neskoromny - Production Designer
	Brian Tyler - Original Music By
	Colin Strause - Director
	Dan O'Bannon, et. al. - Based On Characters Created By
	Dan Zimmerman - Editor
	Daniel Pearl - Cinematographer
	Greg Strause - Director
	John Davis - Producer
	Robbie Brenner - Executive Producer
	Shane Salerno - Screenplay

New York Times
"[D]ecently rendered. There are a couple of classic horror-film bits in among the sci-fi....Robert Joy is a perfect low-key villain in military guise." 12/26/2007

Variety 6 of 10
As the second round of an earthbound smackdown between two iconic extraterrestrials, "Aliens vs. Predator -- Requiem" provides enough cheap thrills and modest suspense to shake a few shekels from genre fans before really blasting off as homevid product. Slightly more graphic but appreciably less atmospheric than its PG-13 predecessor -- an upscale B-movie that offered the long-awaited monster match-up previously rendered only in vidgames and comicbooks -- the R-rated sequel likely will play best with auds who have little familiarity with, or reverence for, earlier installments in the "Alien" and "Predator" franchises...Occasionally, the filmmakers reveal a cheeky willingness to upend genre conventions, particularly when bending the rules regarding who lives and who dies in this sort of pic. But they may be a tad too clever for their own good while springing a sequel setup in the final scene, the meaning of which will be lost on anyone who isn't intimately familiar with arcane aspects of the "Alien" mythos...The actors have little to do here but hit their marks, say their lines and not bump into each other when the script doesn't call for it. Production values are on the level of a better-than-average direct-to-vid production or a Sci Fi Channel telepic, though the editing in a few battle scenes tends to confuse rather than excite. - Joe Leydon