Nice Suspense, Awful Script

Rating: 4/10 (3 September 2002)

My hat is off to the director, who crafted this movie with the idea to duplicate the suspense of an old twilight zone episode or Hitchcock thriller. While he succeeded at creating the sense of fear and the surreal I hadn't felt since Stephen King's Cat's Eye, he forgot to create a movie around the suspense with enough coherency to suspend the belief of a 21st century audience. All I kept thinking was the characters could have been so much more with so little effort and while very funny at times, the dialogue was forced and contrived and didn't fit like I great movie does. Ultimately however, the failure of this movie was the terrible science-fiction. I'm not complaining that we didn't hear an explanation to the mystery and incredulous visitors and their methods, what I'm p***ed off about is that I paid good money to see a movie where air breathing aliens (which largely consists of water) are also harmed by it --- must be they only dislike it in liquid form, eh? Funny how the aliens avoid the lake, but fly in clouds too. These aliens are intelligent enough to fly trillions of miles, and possess technology that we cannot dream of, yet one cannot get out of a flimsy locked pantry. Please don't brandish me as `not getting it' and one of those people who fall into the group that at my core must fear, rather than hope, that's not it. Maybe I am a bit mad that I was alienated because I choose to believe that luck is luck; maybe I think it is a bit indulgent that God choose to give Mel advice about how to save his family, while in the meantime millions were being abducted and killed by the aliens (maybe they weren't Christians?), but mostly I am mad that this movie was good is so many areas that so few aren't and was so bad in places it didn't have to be.