Like last year's Freddy vs. Jason, AVP aims to reach a much broader audience than its source films. Its performance at the US box office suggests that it succeeds, although this desire to please no doubt also accounts for the overwhelmingly negative reviews the film has received.

AVP is set in the present, in which a team of Antarctic explorers find themselves caught in the middle of a battle between the aliens and predators in an enormous underground pyramid.

There's no Arnie or Sigourney, of course, so the humans are led by Lance Henriksen, with the strong female role going to Saana Lathan. This low-key casting does at least allow the film to retain some mystery as to who will survive, but it also demonstrates the film's confusion as to whether or not it even needs human characters.

On the one hand, this is a film for geeks, who just want to see the monsters pitted against each other. However, the filmmakers also seem to want a family audience, so we're given a cast of squeaky clean human surrogates, making the whole thing feel not unlike Jurassic Park.

As a result of this compromise, AVP is a film that won't fully satisfy anyone. Nonetheless, it is visually impressive, consistently entertaining, and sequels are already planned.