For some reason, maybe because I’m forever naturally skeptical and cynical, I used to be among the mass of intellectuals who hate Paul W.S. Anderson, well, I think the reason is one of those, “Just because...” dealies. Then I realised I’d only seen one of his movies, Event Horizon – and that I liked. So far this year, I’ve added Resident Evil and this, Alien Vs. Predator to that shortlist, and I have to say, I’ve yet to see what’s so bad about “the other, non-artsy-fartsy, Paul Anderson”.

I enjoyed the hell out of this movie, and for obvious reasons I expected to hate it. It’s much more than the quick cash-in that the title would lead one to believe. It fits into both Alien and Predator series in such a way as to be either practically seamless, or, should you choose, redundant. The ending surprised me more than a lot of things have this year: you really wouldn’t expect anything approaching the (at least attempt at) emotion in the penultimate scene. It could well just be me, but I was personally pleasantly surprised by the turn the story took on its way to the promised showdown in the title. This ain’t just two horror villains fighting over their prey a la Freddy vs. Jason here, this is a buddy combat movie between two species. One I’ll watch again for sure.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 7th, 2004 at 7:00 pm in Movie Reviews, unrated. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.