Who's in It: Reiko Aylesworth, Steven Pasquale, John Ortiz, Robert Joy, Johnny Lewis, Ariel Gade, Kristen Hager
The Basics: Aliens fight Predator. In small-town Colorado. I know, the trailer says, "This Christmas there will be no peace on earth." And the poster makes it look like this is going to be the final showdown on a global scale. So here I was, thinking maybe this would be a sort of Destroy All Monsters '07 with serious worldwide apocalypse and puny humans succumbing to superior alien battle techniques. But no. Small-town Colorado. And that's kind of it. I'm glad I waited until the day after Christmas to see this or the total disappointment I feel now would have ruined my holiday.
What's the Deal? There's this thing on this site that I write called "Weekend Watch." Maybe you've seen it. It's a little paragraph about what's going to be good this weekend. And I titled this week's "When Aliens Battle Predators We All Win." That was before I saw it. I had that much hope for its entertainment value. I must now eat all those words. Because this movie is so boring and narrow in scope, so lacking imagination and a sense of fun as to be a violation of my love for both Alien(s), Predator and perhaps all fighting monsters.
In Lieu of Excitement, Suspense, Fear, Invention or a Plot That Makes Sense: There's always gore. And you get some. A guy gets skinned alive. A pregnant woman gets double-pregnant when the aliens come along. Kids get their faces eaten. So, you know, that's fine and all, when it happens. But it doesn't even happen all that much.
Homage vs. Laziness: Retreadism How many times can alien babies burst out of stomachs? Would you like to see it more than once? More than twice? Multiple times? Won't that be superscary and gross? Won't that blow your mind over and over and over? Good, because that's mostly what this movie has up its sleeve. Oh yeah, and that part where the Alien gets all close the face-breathy with a victim. Remember how that happened in the Alien movies? They do some more of that.
Can Sigourney Weaver Sue These People for Character Infringement? There's a yelling, dark-haired, female military character in this movie who gets all sweaty in a tank top and carries a big gun and has to save a little girl. No, really, I'm not kidding, there is.