Aliens vs Predator: Requiem crashes into theaters with a simple promise: a Predator comes to Earth to clean up an Alien outbreak. The execution does not honor that promise. Directed by the Brothers Strause from a screenplay by Shane Salerno, this 2007 horror film runs 94 minutes and wants to be a tense, claustrophobic thriller about a small Colorado town overrun by alien horrors. It mostly fails, and the failure is structural, not stylistic.
The setup is sound. A Predator ship crashes near Gunnison, Colorado, and out crawls a Predalien, a creature that looks like a Predator and acts like an Alien. The facehuggers follow, and the town’s population becomes host to a growing nest of xenomorphs. A lone Predator named Wolf arrives to kill the infestation. What follows is a mess of bad pacing, worse lighting, and a complete lack of originality.
Trailer, via TrailerTrackerEnglish.
Opening With the Ship Crash
The film opens with a Predator ship leaving Earth carrying captured Xenomorph facehuggers and Scar’s body. A chestburster emerges, combining traits of both species. It grows fast, kills the Yautja aboard a scout ship, and one Yautja accidentally blows a hole in the hull with his Plasmacaster. The ship crashes in a forest outside Gunnison. The last survivor sends a distress signal before the Predalien kills him.
That is the best part of the movie. It is tight, brutal, and efficiently staged. The ship crash is a good visual, and the idea of a hybrid creature escaping is genuinely unsettling. The problem is that the film never builds on that premise. It just moves forward with the same formula: human gets facehugged, human dies horribly, Predator shows up, Predator fights.
Wolf Arrives to Clean Up
Wolf, a skilled veteran cleaner, receives the distress signal and heads to Earth. He uses a Predator mask to watch a recording of the ship attack, a syringe to detect traces of facehuggers, and a bomb to destroy the ship. He finds the corpses of Buddy and Sam, disposes of them with an acid-like liquid, and kills a police officer who spots him. The town launches a manhunt for the missing people.
Wolf is supposed to be the film’s anchor. He is a professional hunter, and his arrival should raise the stakes. Instead, he feels like a plot device. His scenes are fragmented, his motivations are unclear, and his fights are cut together in a way that obfuscates more than it clarifies. The film is so busy cutting between multiple storylines that it loses track of who is doing what.
The Town’s Victims
The human cast is thin. Steven Pasquale plays Dallas Howard, an ex-convict returning to Gunnison after prison. He reunites with his brother Ricky, who is in love with Jesse Salinger but harassed by her boyfriend Dale Collins and his friends Nick and Mark. Reiko Aylesworth plays Kelly O’Brien, who returns from the army reserves and reunites with her husband, Tim. Ariel Gade plays Molly O’Brien, and Kristen Hager plays Jesse.
None of these performances are memorable. The script gives them no reason to be. They are there to be facehugged, to die screaming, or to wander through dark streets looking for answers. Sam Trammell, as Tim, fares slightly better because he gets a few lines of exposition, but even that is minimal. The film is so focused on the action that it forgets to care about the people caught in it.
The Visuals Are a Mess
Tom Woodruff Jr. plays the Aliens and the Predalien. He had previously portrayed the Aliens in Alien 3, Alien Resurrection, and Alien vs Predator. He reprised the role here. Ian Whyte plays The Predator/Wolf, the main Yautja who arrives to eliminate the Aliens. Matthew Charles Santoro provided the voice of Wolf. Whyte had portrayed the four Yautja in the previous film. Bobby “Slim” Jones (“Bull”) and Ian Feuer (“Bone Grill”) play the additional Yautja.
The practical effects are solid. Woodruff and Whyte know how to move in their suits. The problem is the lighting. The film is dim, murky, and often impossible to see. Characters disappear into shadows, and the audience is left guessing what is attacking them. This is not a stylistic choice. It is a technical failure. A horror film should create dread through atmosphere. This film creates confusion through incompetence.
The Box Office and Reviews
Aliens vs Predator: Requiem premiered on November 4, 2007, in Los Angeles. It was released theatrically by 20th Century Fox on December 25 in the United States. The film holds a Metacritic aggregate score. Plans for another sequel were abandoned, with further independent entries in both franchises released in 2010 and 2012 respectively.
Critics were harsh. The film received generally negative reviews from critics for its poor lighting, editing, and lack of originality. The aggregate score reflects that judgment.
What Went Wrong
The film fails in almost every department. Here is a ranking of its sins:
- Poor lighting. The film is too dark to see what is happening.
- Fragmented storytelling. Multiple plot threads get cut together badly.
- Lack of character development. The humans are interchangeable victims.
- Uninspired action. The Predator’s fights are repetitive and poorly shot.
- Bad editing. The film cuts between storylines without letting the audience follow.
The film tries to be a sequel to Alien vs Predator (2004) while also expanding the universe. It fails on both counts. It does not respect the lore it is based on, and it does not build a world worth caring about. The Predalien is a good idea. The execution of that idea is a disaster.
A Franchise That Could Not End Well
The Alien vs Predator franchise has never been respected by serious critics. Its films are often dismissed as cash grabs, and this entry does nothing to change that perception. It is a movie that exists to sell toys and tickets, not to entertain or frighten. The result is a film that is neither scary nor fun.
The film ends with the Predator’s cleanup mission continuing. The outcome is left vague, and the audience is left without a clear resolution. That is not a satisfying conclusion. It is a shrug.
The Verdict
Aliens vs Predator: Requiem is a failure on nearly every level. It is a film that takes a promising premise and wastes it on poor execution. The lighting is bad, the editing is worse, and the characters are nonexistent. It is a movie that should have been shorter, sharper, and more respectful of the audience.
The film is not without its moments. The crash sequence is tense. The design of the Predalien is unsettling. But these moments are isolated. They do not carry the weight of a full feature. The film’s flaws are systemic, not occasional. They are present in every scene, from the dim corridors of the crashed ship to the shadowy streets of Gunnison.
The franchise has produced a string of films that fans of either series have found disappointing. This entry is no exception. It is a movie that trades atmosphere for spectacle, depth for surface, and humanity for gore. The result is a film that is technically competent in some respects but fundamentally broken in others. It is a film that knows what it is supposed to do and simply fails to do it.
The audience deserves better. The premise deserves better. The Predator deserves better. The Alien deserves better. The people of Gunnison deserve better. And the filmmakers deserve better, because the tools were there. The actors were there. The ideas were there. None of it was put together with care.
This is a film that should have been a footnote. Instead, it is a monument to wasted potential. It is a reminder that a great idea is not enough. A great idea needs a great execution, and this film never delivered that. It is a film that will be forgotten quickly, and that is probably for the best.
The final verdict is simple. Aliens vs Predator: Requiem is a failure on nearly every level. It is a film that takes a promising premise and wastes it on poor execution. The lighting is bad, the editing is worse, and the characters are nonexistent. It is a movie that should have been shorter, sharper, and more respectful of the audience.
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