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The conditions in Alien vs. Predator (2004) couldn’t be better both for the eponymous monsters to kill any civilian who dares cross their paths and to tango with each other. It would after all feel all wrong — like in the way it did in the nonetheless fun New York City-set Predator 2 — for terror to be wreaked anywhere other than somewhere laughably isolated, considering where we first met the both of them. 

The laughably isolated place in Alien vs. Predator is Antarctica, on a slab of indifferently icy land 1,000 miles from the nearest town. Outside communication is spotty at best. People are here because they have been summoned by a dying industrialist, Charles Weyland (Lance Henriksen), who has found out through thermal imaging that there lies miles beneath the ice what looks like a pyramid. He wants to be known for uncovering such a tantalizing discovery before he takes his last breath. The haste with which he has assembled this group of archeologists and mountaineers and other similar types, and the speed with which he expects them all to do the digging and researching, gives head guide Lex Woods (an Ellen Ripley-esque Sanaa Lathan) pause. But she reluctantly agrees to collaborate in the effort after learning her prospective substitutes are way less experienced and very well could welcome people to premature death. 

Those premature deaths would be preferable compared to the predictable fates befalling the cast of Alien vs. Predator. They have it harder than the characters of every slasher movie I can think of — even these own franchises’ earlier ensembles. Try outsmarting the invisibility-practicing and deadly weapon-spoiled Predator — who brings with him a whole spaceship with scores of others like him to boot — while also trying to dodge the head alien in charge and all the little face-huggers helping spread its love. There’s some gesturing at why these franchises are being brought together; apparently these aliens and predators have had going on a collaboration of sorts whose details I would prefer not to get into because I don’t totally get them, if I’m being honest. But all this is of course less important than the gnarly, slick set pieces compiled by director Paul W.S. Anderson, who at the time of the film’s release was concurrently still growing the Resident Evil franchise. 

Alien vs. Predator is mostly perfunctory; it never comes close to the scariness that seemed to come easy to the original movies inspiring it. But it’s also probably about as good as a coming-way-later movie trying to simultaneously save two flagging franchises could be. It’s also fun to see the always-great Lathan, at that time in her career a paragon of the romantic comedy, succeeding as an action heroine. She’s not quite Sigourney Weaver, but she’s still formidable as a woman cleverly conquering what would be for anybody else the impossible.