Alien Vs. Predator (DVD)

To open this review, I’ll use the closing from my article on the theatrical release of Alien Vs. Predator: “AVP might be a waste of time on the big screen for most bloodthirsty moviegoers, but I do believe it will play better on DVD (and hopefully there will even be a more edgy and brutal R-rated version to gratify the old school devotees).”

I was right, and wrong. It does play much better at home on the tube, but the version is not rated R. However, there is an extended director’s cut along with the theatrical version on the disk, and that makes all the difference in the world. (Or maybe it’s because I’d just watched the Predator 2 DVD prior to this; even a test pattern would look like an Oscar winner in comparison.) At any rate, I dug AVP on DVD.

This prequel adventure begins when ultra-wealthy industrialist Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen, who played the android Bishop in Aliens 2 and 3) gathers an international team of archaeologists and scientists, including environmentalist and cold weather expert Alexa Woods (Sanaa Lathan), to investigate a mysterious "hot zone" emanating from deep beneath the ice of Antarctica. They discover an underground pyramid emblazoned with a mixture of Aztec, Egyptian and Cambodian symbols and harboring a matrix of chambers so technologically advanced that it can only be extraterrestrial -- and sure enough, it is. And sure enough, the E.T.'s ain't friendly.

The intrepid team has unwittingly awakened an alien queen from her slumber, and she starts laying eggs to make up for lost time. Inside each egg is a toxic face-hugger just waiting for the chance to become a deadly chest-burster (this process is sped way up from the original Alien films, tailor-made for today's shorter attention spans). We soon learn that the aliens are the captives of the predators, used as opponents in coming-of-age fight rituals. Borrowing a cue from the Cube movies, the underground labyrinth starts reconfiguring itself, suddenly shutting off passageways that were once open. The crew is trapped, with no escape from two lethal races hell-bent on destroying them and each other.

AVP is a pretty movie to look at with its grandiose sets and top notch creature FX, but it's a lot like Anderson's previous works in that it's all facade and no foundation. (However, if you listen to the commentary and watch the featurettes, you will learn a lot of the backstory… but it’s not where it needs to be: in the movie.) It’s not at all suspenseful or scary, but there are some decent fight scenes and some interesting, if bloodless, deaths.

Fun but forgettable, the extended cut of AVP is worth a look.

DVD Features:

Commentary by director Paul W.S. Anderson, Lance Henriksen, and Sanaa Lathan: These commentaries are on the theatrical version only. Anderson’s commentary is interesting from a fanboy’s standpoint, but Lathan and Henriksen’s riffing is more fun.

Commentary by Alec Gillis (alien effects), Tom Woodruff Jr. (alien effects), and visual effects supervisor John Bruno. (Again, on the theatrical version only.) I although I’m not terribly interested in the effects as a rule, I did learn a little bit about the evolution of the looks and actions of the monsters.

Deleted scenes: Three of them, all rightfully excised.

Making-of featurette: No big revelations here, but watchable enough and probably of interest to the Alien or / and Predator diehards.

Dark Horse comic book cover gallery.

DVD-ROM: The first edition of the AVP comic book, AVP comic book background study, exclusive 16-page preview avert of the upcoming AVP graphic novel.

Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson for Horror.com

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Be sure and check out our interview with Lance Henriksen and Sanaa Lathan here