Having thoroughly enjoyed the previous installment despite its tame PG-13 rating, and fully expecting more from this bolder R-rated outing, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem was probably my most anticipated movie of the holiday season. If I had known what lay in store, however, I most likely wouldn't have bothered.

As a movie critic, you sometimes realize there are things not even worth complaining about, but you usually wind up complaining about them anyway. This is one of those things: there is hardly a single human character in this movie worth mentioning, and that is probably the most disappointing thing about the film, believe it or not -- nobody to latch onto. It's not that the script doesn't make at least a halfhearted attempt: the bulk of the first hour is (mis)spent drawing up sketchy backgrounds for four or five of the humans it's understood we'll be rooting for. Then it introduces about two dozen more with no background whatsoever, and with little thought, it becomes clear these non-characters will amount to nothing but meat for the xenomorphic grinder. The actual people in this movie are pathetic... but we're not here to see them, are we? Indeed not.

Like its predecessor, it's clear at an early stage that if we are to side with any non-human creature, it must be the Predators. They are intelligent, technologically advanced, and have, in the past, exhibited at least some sense of fair play whilst out on the hunting grounds. By contrast, the Aliens kill indiscriminantly. While the idea of an Alien-Predator hybrid rouses considerable interest in one's imagination, the film does very little with the new creature, and in fact it seems to have inherited more instinctual traits from the Aliens than the Predators, giving it instant villain status.

The action is pretty decent, although the third act far outperforms the first two, if you can sit there that long. The lighting is dismal, rendering many of the fight scenes between the creatures nearly unwatchable. But with only paper-thin humans to root for, they are simply annoyances to be gutted and tossed aside, as many are. The film breaks no new ground (even with Aliens prowling the Earth), and not surprisingly, gives the audience very little think about or remember after the fact.

Final note to the filmmakers: gruesome, sadistic violence against children and pregnant women will endear you to no one. It isn't "shocking," "entertaining," or even memorable, it's just sickening.

The Bottom Line