“Is this an example of your bedside manner, doctor?” - Becky, Invasion of the Body Snatchers

I dream about Godzilla a lot. It started the summer before my senior year of college and still happens pretty consistently, at least once a month or so. In my dreams, I’ve faced off with Godzilla in Manhattan, my hometown of Jacksonville, and in my current town of Tucson. Once, it happened on Mars. Regardless of the location, those dreams are usually a lot like Cloverfield: I don’t get a good look at the monster and there’s no real plan of action.

I would have found Cloverfield much less irritating if it hadn’t been for the first twenty minutes spent watching good looking, Manhattan twenty-somethings party in a fabulous apartment while engaging in some middle schoolish gossipy tension. By the time the monster showed up, I kinda wanted them all to die anyway.

Brothers Rob and Jason aren’t given much depth. Jason’s girlfriend Lily is a Type A bitch. Marlena Diamond is the only on-camera character who has any personality; however, I can’t tell if it’s because she was written that way or if she’s just a better actor than the rest of the cast. And then there’s Hud, who is only on camera twice: when Jason initially hands it off to him and then again when he’s dead.

Hud is clearly the audience stand in, which indicates that the filmmakers don’t think much of their intended audience. Hud is unattractive and a gossip. He can’t talk to women. He follows behind his friends, rambling on about Superman, the coelacanth, and government conspiracies. Hud watches attractive people doing stuff, separated from them by a camera.

Hud is a talkbacker at Ain’t It Cool News.

And his camera work gave me a headache. While I like the idea of a monster movie filmed at victim level via hand held camera, the execution was nothing short of nauseating. I would have thrown up seeing this in the theater, and even on my 37 inch screen at home, it was a bit much. I wound up shrinking down the picture and taking a bunch of Excedrin by the end.

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There was no story to speak of beyond “monster terrorizes Manhattan, twenty-somethings look for their friend.” Cloverfield rides on the first-person camera experience and the monster (which really is pretty cool).

Where Cloverfield suffered from too little story, Alien vs. Predator: Requiem suffered from too much. We’ve got a guy who’s just gotten out of prison. We have that guy’s kid brother who delivers pizzas and gets beaten up. We’ve got a woman coming back from military deployment who can’t connect with her bratty daughter. Then there’s the sheriff whom the town doesn’t trust. Then there’s the pizza boy’s love interest, a twenty-five year old high school girl who has no thoughts of her own.

In the middle of all that, there is an Alien-Predator hybrid running around, implanting pregnant women with alien litters. And some regular xenomorphs killing people in the traditional way. And a Predator whose main objective seems to be exterminating the xenomorphs like an intergalactic Orkin man, but will happily skin any townies he comes across.

Alien has been part of our pop culture subconscious since the 1970s. Do we really need to spend a bunch of time establishing xenomorph killing habits, breeding methods, and the threat they represent to humans? We already know how they work - there is no tension in watching characters learn what we already know.

This whole Alien vs. Predator things kinda worked once. Filmmakers (if you can call the people responsible for this space turd “filmmakers”) can’t just plop the same concept in a new location and expect it to work again. Add something else to the mix. Add another franchise crossover, such as Alien vs. Predator vs. Alice from Resident Evil.

AVP:R isn’t just bad, it’s awful. It’s so awful, Dale Arden from Sci Fi’s Flash Gordon is in it. That’s pretty awful.

It’s also ridiculously stupid. I didn’t expect anything brilliant, but I think it takes a spectacular lack of talent to take Alien and Predator and turn them into something this bad. As much as I disliked Cloverfield, it’s Hamlet compared to burning pile of giardia poop.

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Lisa Fary is a graduate of the creative writing program at Florida State University and holds an advanced degree in Special Education. Her early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl.