For those of you who don't remember the first AvP, there's a short recap at the beginning of this one - all about the birth of a new crossbreed of Alien. When this creature manages to damage the ship to the extent that it crashes in the Colorado woods, a single Predator back home follows to hunt the new cross-breed, leading to no end of general all-round death to the inhabitants of the nearby town.

Unfortunately, a few of the human inhabitants have speaking roles - played by a selection of Canada's most-affordable actors. The human subplots are distinctly unimpressive - think any small-town teen drama, throw in a rough-hewn ex-con brother from out of town and a gulf war vet returning home to be with her kid and husband. Still, these subplots do provide plenty of dead meat to get killed in entertaining ways by Aliens or the Predator - so... um, just conjugate a few verbs in Latin or something while there's no Aliens or Predators on the screen - they'll be back shortly, doing what they do best in various violent and gory ways. Enjoy the gruesomeness, I know I will!

Day Watch is rather like the procession of spectres that haunts you in the space between sleeping and waking, especially if you've had a bit of vodka. I like vodka. In fact, I had some before I saw Day Watch, and I think it was the better for that: it made it possible to feel that little bit more acutely the sense in the film that things are going dreadfully, horribly, inexorably wrong. In this film, as in Night Watch before it (you have seen Night Watch, haven't you? Of course you have) the forces of good and evil, personified by the Light and Dark Others, play tug-of-war with humanity and the future of the world. Anton (Khabensky) continues to fight the forces of Darkness while attempting to find his son and save him from the Dark. At the same time, he must follow a quest for the Chalk of Destiny, which makes what is written with it come true. Day Watch is a modern-day Russian fable: raucous, over-the-top, wry, vodka-drenched, and bloody. It is visually spectacular (even the subtitles are executed beautifully - not unlike some of the characters), and it is one of the richest, most haunting film experiences I've had in a long time.