At face value

Rating: 5/10 (16 August 2009)

This film is good at first glance, having the feel of a documentary and a sci-fi movie at the same time. The feel that I left with is that the story did not explore a lot of what would go on. What of the rest of the world? If aliens landed anywhere, there would be interventions from any number of countries, and South Africa would take careful steps to not allow what happened in the movie. Also, what of the views of the humanitarians (which on any subject there are some)? There was not any pro-alien ideas presented, so the documentary angle did not work in that respect. The realism of the movie suffers on these accounts.
What I did like of the movie was the way that it threw you into the middle of the problem, giving you back story by showing you news clips of the years prior. The setting of South Africa was a different place to set such a story, which was good in my opinion, and the aliens seemed to take on the way of life. The humans taking advantage of the aliens made the movie feel more realistic, or in the suspension of disbelief.
Overall, the movie is fun to watch, but it fails in the sense that it does not cover the scope of what would happen if this situation would arise, or a situation close to this. 5/10 stars.