Up there with The Haunting

Rating: 10/10 (8 October 1998)

This is simply an excellent movie. I first saw it on a press show in the cinema, two weeks before anyone else in the country, and was scared to walk outside at 10.30 in the morning. The DTS also helped. Then I got the Laserdisc from America, again with Dolby Digital, and cannot change my opinion that this is one of the coolest movies made in 1997. The acting was great, nods going to Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan, Jason Isaacs and Especially Sean Pertwee, the direction was pacy and smart, and the design of the film - from the FX to the sound - was exemplary. The music was cool, especially the Orbital scetions, and even though the plot is somewhat routine, the way the film was done was fantastic. It could have been another stupid alien intelligence flick - see Sphere - but instead chose to not really explain itself and be all the more frightning. Like Billy Loomis said - "It's much scarier when there's no motive".
Classy film, all round. Oh, and to Jim and Isobel of Mutley Plain, back in Plymouth, who trashed my review in Scene magazine, I was right and you were wrong about this film, I certainly don't owe you £8.60, and expect to see these same words on a cinema screen in a few years when my first film comes out. So there.