crud, frankly

Rating: 2/10 (7 June 2005)

Inspiration in 20th Century Fox offices must have reached rock bottom for someone to come up with an idea as stupid as melding their two most successful horror franchises into one.
But then, to make matters worse they had to go and hire the worst director in the business: Paul WS Anderson. Why? How desperate were they? In any case, the result is a deadening, plot less disaster, woefully acted and filled with some of the clunkiest special effects this side of a Star Trek episode- remember the Alien's first, majestic appearance in Ridley Scott's original? John Hurt, catching sight of that egg, seeing the slight movement, peering over into it Now, instead of that beautifully maintained suspense, aliens burst out of eggs and fly across rooms in slow-motion, Matrix-style. Must say something about the differences between the cinema of the 1970s and that of today.
Whatever the cinematic significance of the film, it's not really worth discussing: the thing's trash, pure and simple. And when the two stars finally meet, they have an incomprehensible, barely visible scrap-fight in the dark. What an anti-climax.