MONSTROSITY

REVIEWED - ALIEN VS. PREDATOR: Isn't it sweet the way Paul W. S. Anderson, the director of Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat and, now, Alien vs. Predator, continues to hang onto those two middle initials?

It is about time somebody broke the news to him that there really is no possibility that he is ever going to be confused with Paul T. Anderson. Certainly it seems unlikely that the director of Magnolia would ever have to suffer the indignity of having one of his films flung into US cinemas with no press show.

Such a fate befell AvP earlier this summer, but, to be fair, this bewilderingly underlit picture is, insofar as I could make any of it out, really not so dreadful. As films with the word "versus" in the title go, it is considerably better than Godzilla Versus the Smog Monster without packing quite the emotional wallop of Kramer vs.Kramer.

The film is so dark because the heroes spend most of their time at the bottom of a pit on an ice-bound island. They have gone there to investigate a mysterious energy radiating from a buried temple. It transpires that the building was constructed by the predators from Predator as a sort of arena in which to battle the aliens from Alien.

Suffice to say this noisy, if efficient, entertainment bears the same relation to both its predecessors as a Big Mac bears to a cow.