Smegma

Rating: 1/10 (12 June 2011)

An extremely unintellectual plagiarism of Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End", stripped of any depth to make room for three rather unspectacular special effects sequences that contributed nothing to the story. M. Night Shyamalan was able to depict the full weight and horror of a train wreck without showing one second of the train wreck. That is the difference between a writer/director and this train wreck of a film. The technological holes would put a sieve to shame. Why bother contacting children who would be old before the event? Was there eugenics going on or were they just watching if the sensitives would beget more sensitives who would be of the right age at the end? If the whispering was telepathic, why was the boy receiving it in his hearing aid? Were he sensitive, would he not hear it regardless? Why did the aliens work in secret when their aim to save the children would have been welcome to the public? Surely such beings who can leap between the stars would not end up racing around at the last minute as if they had no control over the situation. What were the stones for? Nothing, apparently, except as base material for a landing zone for ships that never actually set down. If the aliens cared about the children, and were so advanced, would they not be aware that they had driven at least one little girl into a psychotic episode, and still do nothing about it? And the picture of two white kids at the end with two white rabbits on a very beige planet with white trees, rescued by white guys with white hair who turned out to be glowing white featureless beings, bore some undertones that left me uncomfortable. The planet at the end was pretty, though, like one of those 1960s apocryphal posters. That's about the only redeeming factor. It would make a nice background image on one's computer. I include all these spoilers in order to relieve you of any curiosity about this abysmal film. Go read "Childhood's End" for yourself. I think you'll find the pictures are better (in your head--reading puts pictures in your head, if you haven't tried it yet--I know, it's going out of style) and it actually means something.