Quite dumb with wafer-thin script despite promising start and special effects

Rating: 2/10 (26 May 2009)

Having failed to see this film at an Odeon theatre in London (my girlfriend became violently sea-sick), I thought the promising beginning of it could be a precursor to how the film would end up. A cool monster-flick, yeay! I was wrong. All in all, the film is almost worse than Spielberg's take on "War Of The World". A group of people form in New York, USA, to say good-bye to a friend who's going away to work in Tokyo, Japan. Everything that is seen is filmed by a participant of the party, who is quite uninteresting as a person, hence in my eyes numbing the film a little. Anyway, as a few of the characters squander to intrigue over who's hooking up with who, something detonates. People find something otherworldly is tearing up NY. Woo! Sadly, this was the promising bit. Hereafter all is running - with no suspense á la "Alien" whatsoever - or trying to avoid dying, which is boring. I felt little or no sympathy for the characters, and the script felt very thin. All in all, nice special effects but a very dumb film which feels bad, as I think it could have become good with a bit more thought and intelligence.