Have seen it...
In terms of entertainment, it was surprisingly fun. More so than I had thought it would end up being. A lot of that might be to do with going in there and seeing it as a 'monster film', as opposed to anything to do with these series.
In
that sense, it worked. It's a decent 'monster film', in so much as it's what '
Slither' could have been, had it attempted to take itself more seriously.
The acting serviced well, for what it was. There were times when the reactions should have been different: The Sheriff mentioning they found a guy skinned alive, in what felt like an almost casual way... Kelly's daughter not having seen her for, at the least, many months, but having none of the wide-eyed delight she should have, upon first seeing her... The hunter waking up, seemingly not realising he
is missing an arm... The guy on top of the armoured vehicle, coming face to face with an Alien and just sort of looking at it, without awe or or any other type of spine-chilling WTF reaction...
But these are small things and largely just trivial. They
could have pushed it into having a lot more realism, but I can only assume that these were director decisions and perhaps done for shooting schedule time. To the average viewer, they don't matter, but it's disappointing they weren't done.
In some cases, they had aspected to the cahracters which were nicely rounded. Dallas' meeting with his younger brother, for instance. It achieved their dynamic, more or less in the one scene. But then there's stuff like Dale... In one shot, he's exchanging verbal barbs with some guy, then, completely out of the blue,
throws him across the street and chucks his keys down the drain. Seriously, WTF?! And ricky, dude, if Jesse's so hot and coming onto you, even if you don't want to reciprocate (which, you know, you should have at least shown the private temptation to do, considering your feelings on the matter), you should have
at least got your own immediately back on the guy and asked her and her friends to stay there as witnesses, while you call the local police about it. That's assault
and damage to private property, right there.
Nevertheless, it's saying something that I can at least put names to faces, in this one. I can only do that for a very limited number of characters for the predecessor or even '
Alien 3', come to that.
In terms of a film with Aliens and Predators in it... I'm finding it difficult to say, one way or the other. As a collective whole, I'd have to say no, but it
does have its moments. In that respect, it's like the previous film.
Whyte has yet to fully master the Predator movements. Definitely getting there, but it still lacks the fluid, ballet-like grace of Hall's performance, where one movement smoothly carried into the other, just by sheer inertia.
The Aliens looked better than previous advertising showed them as, but that's mostly to do with shadow. Even so, I congratulate the directors for hiding them as well as they did, if that was the intention. This goes
especially well for the facehuggers. That publicity shot must ahve been cut out of the film, because the angles we saw these facehuggers at, made them look like they were clamped tightly to faces. A
huge difference, compared to their previous incarnation! They also moved
beautifully.
Where, however, were the 'cool' things we were going to see the Aliens doing? I never saw any or, at least, don't remember them. There's one which is dragging a dead body along, only to... Repeatedly strike it in the head with the double-jaws...
Why? It looked stupid and illogical. If the Alien finds something it needs in the brains, then have it root around inside the skull, not just flog the proverbial dead horse. It literally made the thing look retarded and that's not something I say lightly, although
would explain why it doesn't seem to get so much as a hint of something else being in the same (rather massive) room.
The same level of senses which, remember, Ripley 8 was merely influenced by, yet was still able to detect when the Auriga was starting to move (in a vacuum and with "stealth run" being activated).
Their motivations were a bit off, too. Previously, they've been relentless slaughterhouses, intent on either killing or breeding with the target, no matter what. A collective swirling, vicious storm of death, unable to be turned away. In this version, they can be fightened away with a few hits of a gun. In fact, I seemed to get the distinct impression that they were less interested in killing the Predator, at some points, as opposed to 'counting coup' with it.
This is particularly true of the Predalien... "Oh, you just cut me! Here, let me just stand and pointlessly roar at you, in return!"
This is repeated, later on, when the Predator slowly and methodically removes equipment and (slowest of all) the mask. There were comments, months ago, from people wanting the Predalien to tear the thing away, then the Predator to slowly look at the creature and roar angrily at it. My response was always to the effect of, why would the Predalien
let it?
But no, it just stands there... Posing... Growling... Letting the Predator
cover its eyes and slowly striptease... Again, WTF?
The Predalien was a bit of a mess, really, as many had feared it would end up being. The dreadlocks don't add to its character. In fact, they damn well obscure it, half the time, considering how much they're twirling around the place and covering the details up and was more often identified, not by jaws any other feature, but by its vast, mucous-filled
bulk. Even so, I'm thinking about its mentality... In '
Aliens', the Queen was able to command one of her children away from Ripley and Newt, with a loud, exhaling hiss. the Predalien doesn't bother with this, literally bitch-slapping its brethren away in a decidedly... Dare I say it... Non-Alien fashion.
The reproductive cycle is now more confused than ever, too. Unless teh various pregnant hosts' stomach linings had already been split open, in which case they should have died well before the actual 'hatching', how in the world did it manage to introduce those orange-sized embryos to the womb, when it pushed them down mouth?
The actual confrontations are weird, too. Aliens and Predators coming to blows, to me, should be the epitome of viciousness. Here, they just sort of... Run into one another. No slicing, no dicing and when one or the other of them
does seem able to do something about it, it's the Predator doing so in a way meant to make it look iconic, at the expense of
wasting considerable time. When we do get to a point where it looks like we'll see them going at it in the way they should, like the department store, it simply cuts away.
There
are moments of 'coolness', don't get me wrong. They can even sweep you along, if you forget we're dealing with Aliens and Predators, but there's also the feeling of going from one set piece to the next, just for the sake of it.
An example would be the pool scene.
Something is heard oging into the water, the likes of which the characters concerned, have not only never seen, but don't stand much chance of doing, either, because the lights have gone out. One would think this would be an excellent chance for some '
Jaws'-like impending doom and real horror. Instead, the girl starts freaking out and they all try to rush away... Why? How does she know what it is? Why do they believe her? Why not have the bully-type ridicule her or whatever?
Another example is the National Guard. The town's evacuated because of the power going down? What? And the National Guard are called in, armoured vehicles and all? What's that meant to achieve? In all seriousness, is that what happens in the US? Does the National Guard have jurisdiction over power station failures? Do they hold the workers at gun-point and go, "FIX THIS NOW, YOU f**kER!" Because, really, being called in because the Sheriff diplomatically tells the authorities they've got some sort of biolgocial hazard breakout, would be far more logical.
It's moments like that which scream 'plot device', yet
do add a certain sense of atmosphere to the proceedings - putting this film on the same level as a typical james Bond outing, if truth be told. I felt a bit like it was '
War Of The Worlds' when they came thundering through, combined with all the evacuating traffic (God knows what was holding it
up, of course, because it was jsut a rural place, but there we are) and that was of the atmospheric good.
This is where we come to the other flaw, however. Wasted potential. Because we get these scenes and then hardly anything is actually
done with them, before it's time to go somewhere else. They had the National Guard getting abducted and attacked, but with none of the creeping terror felt in the nest scene, in '
Aliens', which it was blatently attempting to copy. We went from them being killed, to hearing their dying cries over the radio, which was an
excellent idea, but unlike, say, '
Memphis Belle, where something very similar happens, there's very little emotional pay-off from it.
And yes, the hospital scene is emotionally dark, but... There's something missing from it. Lambert's death, in '
Alien', had many times more horror than this and, considering it was about
a giant space monster forcing embryos down the throats of pregnant women, it's perplexing me as to why this is. In fact, part of me wonders if that scene didn't go far
enough - if you're going to step into that territory, then go balls-out with it. I don't mean in a pornographic way, either, but there was something a bit... I don't know... A bit too quick about it. The heart monitor screens flat-lining was a great touch, yet I didn't get a feeling of something to rival any of the other films, in that scene. There was nothing 'special' about it. It just felt generic and by-the-numbers, although I thought the Predalien looking through the glass at babies in incubators, thinking about them, was an interesting touch (and, regretfully, about as cerebral as the beast ever tries to be).
As you can see, I thought there were some good ideas, here and there, but the bottom line is, it needed far less high-octane and a lot more ominous dread, with a heavy injection of added realism.
In terms of entertainment, it's got decent value (and I didn't felt cheated out of my money, by any means). It's just not anywhere near the classic everyone was wetting their udnerwear over for ages, in anticipation of.
Unfortunately, I think that, because of that, it's only going to have a very limited rewatchability factor. Once the 'cool' scenes have been watched a couple of times, most viewers aren't going to sit through it all again for a long time.
Initial viewing: Three out of five.
Rewatchability/'cassic factor': Two out of five.
Quote from: Porkus Maximus on Jan 18, 2008, 09:08:24 PM
He injects it into the wrist computer. It analyses the fluid and selects or creates a vision mode specfically designed to track the facehugger.
I felt it was tracking the fluid the things were immersed in and, thus, covered by. They didn't look like facehugger tracks, more like fluid smeared over the floor.
