The first Alien vs. Predator--the film which fans of both series waited for seemingly forever, and which was a bitter disappointment--laid the groundwork for an ongoing war between the two brutal species, in what was supposed to be the ultimate example of survival of the fittest. That movie ended with an Alien/Predator hybrid(dubbed the PredAlien) bursting from the chest of the noble Predator that had fallen to stop the Alien queen and save a bold woman with whom it had partnered, as the Predator reclamation ship began the trek back to its home world.

     After opening credits which come at you with both the intensity and ridiculousness of Team America's literally explosive credits, this new installment picks up immediately where the last film left off and shows the PredAlien growing to maturity in a matter of minutes, to attack and kill the entire crew of the spaceship, which then crashes in the woods just a few miles away from the town of Gunnison County, Colorado.

     Before we continue, I have to inform you that for the sake of this review, I must obviously recall specific events from this movie in order to break it down for you. For the sake of my own sanity however, I will be attempting to forget this movie as I write...we'll just have to see whether I end up a drooling vegetable or not at the end.

     The ship is discovered by a hunter and his eight year-old son, who are quickly set upon by facehuggers. The father manages to kill one, but the acidic blood within the creature splatters him and burns his arm off. The reactions of both father and son to this were so bad, they produced laughter from my screening audience. This is only the first instance of unintentional chuckles; sadly, it was far from the last.

     To the film's credit, it takes no prisoners as far as who will fall victim to the Aliens' lust for victims; both the father and son soon have their chests burst open for new hatchlings. However, in a film so densely populated with characters whom you'll hope will die the instant they appear on screen, it's hard to decide whether there's any human in the film actually worth rooting for. Even poor John Ortiz(American Gangster, Miami Vice) a capable actor who apparently must pay bills like any-one else, slums in this flick as the town's woefully unprepared sheriff.

     In lieu of a queen, the Aliens quickly learn to take direction from the superior hybrid PredAlien, and go about finding vic-tims to both feast on and impregnate. However, as directed by the sibling duo of Colin and Greg Strause(16mm Mystery), the movie plays fast and loose with the biological groundwork of the Alien species, which has been meticulously detailed in the original Alien series. For one thing, there's the nearly instantaneous path from newborn to adulthood the PredAlien takes. While it can be argued that because we don't know how fast Predators grow, and Aliens tend to take on the biological distinctions of the species they inhabit, it still seems ridiculous that the former species would become mature so quickly...at that rate, they'd have the lifespan of a fruit fly. Also, there's a later scene in a hospital where a pregnant woman is attacked by the PredAlien. Again, while it's unknown how Predators reproduce, this scene gives new meaning to the terms forced blowjob and induced labor.

     Seriously, if you even suspect you've got a bun in the oven, you might want to stay away from this film. You'll be bashing your husband in the head with a frying pan while he sleeps, out of pure reflex.

     As the Aliens scour for food, we're introduced to our lame cast: there's Dallas(Steven Pasquale), the ex-convict just come back into town. He's the brother of Ricky(Johnny Lewis), another ready-to-fail who's barely holding down his job as a pizza delivery boy. Ricky has the lusties for neighborhood hot chick Jesse(Kristen Hager), who inexplicably returns the feel-ing. Seriously, this duo is as mismatched as Shia Labeouf's character and Megan Fox's from Transformers. While Hager's Jesse is nowhere near as scorching as Fox's Mikaela, there's not a chance in hell that she'd ever be interested in someone as 100% wimpy as Ricky in real life, especially when he gets the snot beaten out of him by Jesse's jock boyfriend and his two buds, just for making a joke at the jerk's expense. Also, from the inane dialogue(thank you, "writer" Shane Salerno) spouting from their mouths, we're supposed to assume these are high school or early college age kids, when the truth is almost everyone present looks older than the supposed teens of Smallville.

     We're further introduced to other disposable characters, along with the standard Ripley of the film, Kelly(24's Reiko Aylesworth, also with electricity bills to pay), a soldier mom returning home from overseas. She's forced first into the role of terrified victim when her husband is killed by an Alien, then puts on the Ripley suit to protect her daughter Molly(Ariel Gade). Eventually, she hooks up with Dallas, Sheriff Morales and a few other survivors-on-the-run as they seek to escape the town, which is very quickly overrun by the Aliens, in spite of the arrival from home world by a lone Predator assigned to wipe out the infestation and avenge his fallen brethren.

     While the fight scenes between the titular creatures come fast and abundantly, and this Predator is at least fifty times more bad-ass than the loser from the first AvP--he's also about twenty times dumber. When we first see him on the home world(a much ballyhooed sequence which literally lasts all of two minutes, if that), watching what appears to be an instantaneous distress transmission from the doomed space-craft in his Fortress of Predatortude, he gathers up the stand-ard gear we've seen in both Predator features, in spite of knowing the advanced creature he's up against! Once on Earth, his aim with his laser cannons is so bad, he accidental-ly destroys the power generators for the town(yes, a plot device used to keep us from seeing just how rubber the suits are). Also, with the lore of the Predators' superior hunting skills having been built up for so long, how is it he doesn't suspect that he himself is being stalked by a single Alien, clinging to the underside of the very catwalk he's striding upon?

     \^</>' ("duh!" in the Predator language)

     If there's one thing AvP: Requiem can't be faulted for, it's the brisk pace at which it moves. Clocking in at 1:26, thank-fully the film is over almost before you realize it. Still, in that barely hour-plus, little logic is on display. "People are dying--we need guns!" one character cries, even while Sheriff Morales travels to various sites of carnage and mayhem with Dallas--an unarmed civilian--and no backup in sight! Morales has the good sense to call for the National Guard, but would such a unit be deployed so quickly when Morales can't even articulate a full description as to what's going on or what he and his rag-tag group of seemingly deputized high school vigilantes are facing? The Strause brothers crib many a scene from James Cameron's 1986 classic Aliens, including the original Colonial Marine deployment scene from the APC, as well as the nod to the original Dallas from Ridley Scott's Alien. Familiar thesp Robert Joy(C.S.I. New York, The Hills Have Eyes) is on hand as Colonel Stevens, an utterly emotionless drone who lies to Morales about an impending evac of the town, while what's on his mind is a bit more nasty. There's also a nudge-nudge/wink-wink when one final female character is introduced(Blade: Trinity's Francoise Yip), but unless you're a die-hard fan of the Alien series(particularly Cameron's special edition of Aliens), you'll be absolutely lost.

     Surprisingly, although the Strause boys have both worked with Cameron on Titanic, neither learned anything about how to sensibly choreograph fight scenes, instill plausible logic in their stories, or essentially just how to shoot a film. The end-ing also leaves the door wide open for a sequel, as one can infer from the inclusion of Lance Henriksen as Charles Wey-land in the previous AvP and the female intro from this film I mentioned earlier, that all this is to tie into the future already visited in Scott's original masterpiece. The question that must be asked, however, is how anyone could think that works of such beauty--Scott's and Cameron's--could have emerged from such muck?

     Wait, wait, there it is....ahhhhh...bad movie gone from brain now.