samsavenger

I've never in my life been more entertained by a film that has absolutely NO redeeming qualities. Unintentionally inept characters engage in progressively bizarre and unnatural interactions which seem to peak at erratic and unexpected intervals. The awkwardness of the actors is framed by strange pauses, jarring scripts and incredibly bizarre production techniques - there are ample 'deer in the headlights' moments, in which you can feel genuine sympathy for these people who are obviously so caught up in Tommy's strange and dominating creative control that they've failed to see any better.

Other filmmakers play with similarly surreal concepts - David Lynch for example - but this film lacks anything resembling artistic refinement, insight or self awareness placing it far from comparison. It's kind of like watching a train crash in slow motion - random, incoherent, disastrous, accidental and ultimately painful. The sense of alienation emanating from this film places the audience extremely far from being able to relate to what's happening on screen, which leaves a lot of room for uncontrollable laughter given the right circumstances.

The camera work and production techniques would not be out of place in many daytime soap operas, nor would the script and plot, but there is an undefinable quality which separates this movie from the sense mediocrity often found in such shows and instead casts it deep into the abyss of tragically bad film making where it will be forever trapped along with Wiseau's artistic integrity. This really is a new frontier.

It is truly awful, but I cannot recommend it enough.

I accept that it's not necessary or expected for a predator film to have a believable premise or even a stimulating plot... but this was a pretty serious kick in the nads for any audience with half a brain.

I'm a huge fan of the original predator movie. A testament to 1980's excess and an ultimate expression of freedom in the media surrounding violence at the time - it was completely natural in it's blatant worship of uber masculinity, unprecedented ratio of explosions to conversation and cheesy one-liners. It stared you in the face with tongue in cheek and grabbed you by the balls, forced you to swallow it's unintelligible cheese, kicked your ass and sent you on your way. It was proud. Irrespective of the superficial similarities of these two movies, please do not make the mistake of comparing them. They are actually nothing alike at heart.

Half-assed attempts at 'clever plot twists' and blatant flaws in both character and plot logic disrupted the flow on this movie to the point where it was almost unwatchable. The few redeeming qualities which basically involved people kicking the crap out of aliens and vice versa, were obviously CGI and/or cheap rubber sets on a low budget sound stage. Special effects occasionally bordered on laughable, but mostly just plain cheap and distasteful. The fluorescent blood was a nice touch, but being led to believe it involved anything other than the special effects crew emptying out glow sticks on to a cheap costume is insulting.

It occurred to me about two thirds of the way through that this film is nothing more than a progression of ridiculous scenarios, (most derived from countless other near-identical crappy Hollywood movies) during which the characters were expected to leap to wild and sometimes bizarrely misguided conclusions, only to be proved wrong in another surprising string of events which this time around involve shooting, invisible aliens and/or CGI explosions. I felt as though the film was constantly flaunting it's pseudo-intellect by means of constantly pretending to be a step ahead of its audience, but not really making a serious effort or taking any genuinely unexpected turns in the plot. The one 'twist' that did almost inspire me with a dull sense of surprise was the the weak city slicking doctor who appeared at first to be nothing other than comic relief turned out to be a crazed rapist, but this was really not essential to the plot in any way and did not seem to intertwine into the rest of the story. To add to the confusion, he was muttering about being on the same side as the predators before being killed by Brody - with which I celebrated with a yawn of jaded disbelief.

Despite the ounce of effort, character development was shallow at best and did not seem natural for the actors. Casting was bizarre - Adrian Brody's along with comments made throughout the movie ("are you IDF?"), this struck me as more of a thinly disguised pro-Israeli political statement rather than a genuine consideration of appropriateness for the film.

All in all, this is another crappy, uninteresting, generic Hollywood action movie. If that's not bad enough by itself - it was also riddled with gaping plot holes, a jarring cadence, a hammy script, bad special effects and painfully inappropriate casting. To add insult to injury, it has defiled an all time classic action movie and condescended the audience in a manner which makes me scratch my head as to why more people don't absolutely hate it.