Despite brilliant sequences and some terrific performances, the story doesn't hang together

Rating: 6/10 (6 August 2002)

One is aware watching this film that it is the work of an independently minded artist who has been given relatively free reign. In the realm of committee-created summer garbage, that's breathtaking! Unfortunately, despite many brilliant sequences and some terrific performances (the two children, Joaquin Phoenix, and Cherry Jones), the story of a minister's struggle with faith in the midst of an alien invasion, though intermittently powerful, just doesn't hang together. You're left with too many questions that linger and grow in number in the days following -- and not good ones, but rather questions like what were they doing with all that crop since no one seemed to really be farming it? The comparisons of Shyamalan to Hitchcock and Spielberg are apt, however, and the framing of almost every shot, the choice to keep most of the horror off-screen, shows an all too rare insight, taste, and intelligence.