Xtro II: The Second Encounter - If 'Aliens' was remade on a budget of £1.50

Just by coincidence, 'Aliens,' is my favourite movie.  I think it's the perfect blend of many genres, including action, horror, sci-fi and drama.  I don't know why I watched 'Xtro II: The Second Encounter.' I must have been bored and - occasionally - you can find a little gem of a B-movie here and there.

What I got was effectively a photocopy of the script for 'Aliens,' only with all the decent and believable dialogue removed and given to a four-year-old to rewrite.  Then all the special effects shots were removed and replaced by models, sets and monsters made out of Play Dough.  In short... it was truly awful.  And yet I sat through the whole thing, never once wanting to turn it off.

I should point out that, despite being a sequel to the 'cult classic' horror B-movie, 'Xtro,' this installment has basically nothing to do with the first (besides the obvious use of the name in order to get a few extra views by fans of the original).  It's a totally new film with totally new characters in a totally new setting.  And, possibly worst of all, is that the monster is a totally new concept and therefore is totally not connected to the first one.

Here, those naughty government scientists in one of those - seemingly numerous - shady, black-budget research facilities, open a portal to one of those places that contains worlds full of nasty beasties who want to eat us.  Naturally, one comes into our dimension and a team of (not Colonial!) marines are brought in to rectify the situation.  What you get is the most poor clone of 'Aliens' ever as the team tries to hunt the monster in a facility.

'Xtro II: The Second Encounter' is one of those 'so-bad-they're-good' movies.  If you're a fan of 'Aliens' then you really have to watch this.  Not for the bad acting (you probably already guessed that there would be no real actors you'd ever heard of - unless you're a major fan of 'The X-files' and know Nicholas Lea as 'Alex Krychek') or not special effects, but simply to see just how many references and rip-offs a film can make without actually getting sued.  In fact, if you were feeling brave you could even make some sort of drinking game out of it where you take a shot of alcohol whenever a blatant 'Aliens' nod occurs.  Actually... don't.  Your liver would not be able to take it.

5/10 a hard trek, a bit like unicycling to Mordor and back