Not suspenseful, not exciting, not logical...but well acted

Rating: 4/10 (9 July 2004)

Mel Gibson's powerful screen presence is the only thing that saves this dismal attempt at a scifi suspense thriller. We are intended to accept Gibson as a former priest (presumably Episcopalian or Eastern Orthodox, since he has been married and has children) who renounced his faith because of a personal tragedy. Then we are to believe that he and his family being scared out of their wits by an extraterrestrial invasion will provide the impetus for him to regain his faith. Well, maybe it would, but I think finding out that we are not alone in the universe would have the opposite effect on most people.
There are several unexplained and illogical elements in the plot. For example, why does his young daughter have a phobia about drinking water? We know plotwise why she does, because all the undrunk water around the house comes in handy later in a plot device I won't reveal, but why does she have such a phobia in the first place? Why does the mere unseen but suspected presence of the extraterrestrials cause a beloved family dog to become viscious enough to try to kill the little girl, forcing her young brother to stick a knife in him, and cause the other dog to be tied up, but appear to have no such effect on humans? And what is Mel going to do with all that corn? He lives on a one crop farm with acre upon acre of corn, but there don't appear to be any farm implements anywhere in sight, nor are there any hired hands. Are Mel and his brother going to pick all this corn with their bare hands?
Now let's get to the extraterrestrials. They appear to be the most incompetent extraterrestrials ever to appear in a scifi film. We are to believe that they have a technology sufficiently advanced to allow them to travel from another solar system light years away, with hostile intent, yet they don't appear to have any weapons with them, no ray guns, no laser beams, not even a pitchfork. Moreover, one of them can't even get out of a locked pantry. Maybe he was the doofus of the bunch, since he was one of the ones who got left behind. The depiction of the extraterrestrials is also singularly unimaginative, since the only one we get a good look at appears to be wearing a rubber suit that looks like it's the same one worn by James Arness the "The Thing from Another World" back in 1951.
But as I said, it's well acted by Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Cherry Jones, and the children. Otherwise a ludicrous mess. 4/10