Reviews

The infamous and ill-fated Demeter of Bram Stoker's book is an interesting subject matter to be turned into a film.

However, the makers of this went for modern cliches, silly character behaviour (taking forever to search their own ship once they discover a deadly intruder and then only doing it at night). Inserting an Oxford educated black character who doesn't speak like an educated Victorian would. Stereotypical Eastern Europeans that never develop as characters.

It should have been a wonderful exploration of this interesting subject matter but just fell flat.

The effects are quite good but nothing special in the GCI era, and many of the actors are fine people who worked with subpar material for their talents. It just feels like something we've seen before - and not in a good way.

SPOLIERS AHEAD!!!

Great camera-work and action, and certainly miles better than the last Predator in terms of being well made technically, and in terms of interest and seriousness - but it ultimately falls short of the mark.

Some people have raved over the 'historical accuracy' but this seems to be based mostly on the Comanche styles of dress and little else. The filmmakers certainly didn't show the Comanche as the horse culture they were - and decided to overlook the very strict gender roles that the Comanche had during this era which was common to most Hunter-Gather societies....likely as that would undermine the entire basis of the plot!

The portrayal of Europeans as dirty and near-feral was no better than the cheap 1950s racist portrays of Native Americans - it was tiresome then and it's tiresome now no matter who it targets.

The effects were of a generally high standard, and the action was fun to watch. It would have been nice to know why Amber Midhunter's character wants to be a hunter in a believable way - or how a young woman from a tight knit hunter-gather society at the time could just walk off for days on end without telling anyone. Being close to and around others was a matter of life or death for most of human history - and cultures evolved restrictive rules to ensure people didn't wander off or that women of child baring age didn't risk themselves hunting, but Hollywood needs to keeping forcing the Message I suppose no matter what. Just imagine if they had come up with a believable way for a female Comanche of the time to survive alone and fight an unknown creature that was a bit more well thought out...

Seeing another 5'5" women face off in melee against seven tall aliens that we saw kill special forces men of herculean strength and resilience in other movies feels forced - but at least we see her train a little, unlike recent Hollywood efforts where the 'strong female' is just intrinsically better with no explanation.

There's a big plot hole/problem as well in that we see the gun that was given by a Predator to Danny Glover's character at the end of Predator 2 in the hands of the village after the defeat of the Predator - this suggests the Predators come back and kill everyone in the village after the end of this film....they would have to in order to have the gun to give to Danny Glover's character in the 1990s after all. It seems they did try to tie in the movie to past efforts but didn't think it through very well.

It's step in the right direction though - and was very much a watchable firm. If this is the start of a trend towards returning to enjoyable action based movies for the franchise we've got a lot to look forward to.

Aside from the tropes, effects of the time The Resurrection is a fair pilot with some odd plot holes which one wouldn't expect in a pilot starting a sequel to a classic movie (and ultimately book).

I think the most glaring is the fact that so many people are unaware of a massive alien invasion that leveled towns and cities, prompted at least one nuclear strike, and killed potentially hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.

Secondly, that they didn't study the alien bodies properly, dispose of them when done, and start to study their technology in preparation for a potential second waves makes no sense. I know governments aren't always smart but the opportunity presented to advance technology by decades or even centuries after capturing alien ships wouldn't be missed...especially if it was in the context of an existential threat.

I think the writers should have come up with a better follow up to the 50s movie, but I understand showing a post-invasion world wouldn't have given an opportunity to show the aliens waking up and trying again...and potentially opened up a need for a huge budget as it's likely we would have applied much of the left over tech from the aliens after 35 years.

Otherwise I think the acting is fine, with some good talent. I watched this as a youngster on TV when it came out so it holds a nostalgic spot for me.