Predictable and Unsatisfying

Rating: 4/10 (5 April 2011)

**Warning: Spoilers!**
NOTE: I do not read other reviews before writing my own.
First a word about cinematography. Overall the movie has a good look and feel to it, appropriate for the script. CGI of the aliens and their ships was good, but the fire in the plane crash scene was very poor.
The movie held my interest for a while, the acting was OK, the plot had potential, but the execution left much to be desired.
The movie presents three questions from the beginning: 1. Who is whispering? 2. What are they whispering about? 3. Why are they bothering to communicate that information? The answers came too quickly. #2 was answered first, then #1 was easy to guess when the we are told the whisperers offered to take the boy with them. OK then, I thought, it's an alien movie, but what motive do they have for sending such a cryptic message? As it turns out the aliens are either stupid or evil, but the movie makes them seem like saviours. Think about it: if their technology and/or ability is advanced enough to know the future, could they not have, at very least, organized a mass evacuation of the planet? Why choose several pairs of children to populate a new planet? The most logical answer is: ant farm. Sure, help the little creatures survive for a while, maybe teach them to be 'better' humans than the rest of the human race and let everyone else burn. Predictable and unsatisfying.
Another interpretation implied by the movie is religious--but if this is the case, science fiction and Christianity are mixed and muddied into a nonsensical mess (the aliens remind me a bit of the end of the Babylon 5 TV show and its 'angel' character). Is the point that humans have crapped up the earth, deserve to be destroyed, but hey, let's start over on another planet with a few of the young, impressionable ones! Again, predictable and unsatisfying.
This movie could have been written to leave a person pondering his/her existence, instead it left me wondering where the last two hours of my life went.
Overall, not really worth a watch.