Picking up where the first film left off – with the strange Predalien bursting into existence, this ill-advised sequel continues to pair up two of the greatest movie monster creations against one another, with humanity stuck between them, and because of the terrible way it’s handled, no one can be bothered to care.

Unfortunately, for me, it is the next stop in the Sci-Fi Chronicles book, so let’s get through this as quickly as possible, shall we?

The studio, I’m looking at you Fox, and the filmmakers seemed to almost want to turn this into a teen slasher film.

When the Predator ship crash lands on the outskirts of Small Town Anywhere, Who Cares, the town and its inhabitants are trapped in the subsequent battle. Of course, to draw in the valuable teen audience, the cast is filled with bratty twenty-somethings. playing teenagers, being used for canon fodder, while Reiko Aylesworth plays the only solid character in the entire film, Kelly, a marine just back from a tour of duty.

We are allowed the briefest of glances of a Predator inhabited world. Their homeworld? Maybe. This is glimpsed when a Predator receives an alert about the crashing ship, and escaped xenomoprhs and throws his bad ass self into action.

A lot of it plays like poorly written television melodrama with the occasional alien encounter thrown in to remind you that you are watching something that could have been pretty amazing if the studio had cared about their properties and treated them, and the audience they were making these films for with a measure of respect.

One is unable to convey how completely inept this film is. The acting is horrible, the story seems to be scraped from the bottom of the television barrel, and the special effects, when they happen, are done in such dark environs that you know they are hiding their budget constraints in shadow.

To take two series, originated, respectively by Ridley Scott and John McTiernan (and the creative teams behind both of them) and to see them both brought low by such shoddy storytelling and lack of respect for source material, and audience, is infuriating.

If you are not made to care about the characters, if you can’t see yourself in the story, then there is no emotional involvement with it, and the entire thing can become an exercise in futility. Requiem is definitely a futile experience, if the filmmakers believe cardboard one-dimensional characters, and the potential for some interesting ideas is enough to engage their audience, then they think their viewers are morons who are willing to throw away their money.

It’s time to let someone else, someone with a passion for both titles to make this work.