Fear is our own worst enemy

Rating: Null/10 (8 August 2002)

I would first like to say let's see YOU, or ME, try to make a movie and see how well it turns out. It is easy to criticize. With that in mind, I review.
***yes, there are spoilers here***
I think the movie was great. Great soundtrack and cinemtography. I jumped, I laughed, I cried, I predicted what I thought would happen, I was entertained and what's more, challenged to think. Sure, more holes than swiss cheese, but it was a FANTASY, it's not suppossed to explain anything but FAITH. Don't you think the director knew how cheesey it was to have non-opposable thumbed aliens (bordering on retarded, as one person's comments went) fly through space to earth without weapons or a raincoat or knowing how to open doors? And then after flying through space to get here, they need crop circles to navigate or communicate? That's part of the point, even. It wasn't the monsters that we had to fear, it was fear itself. And just because it's called FAITH doesn't necessarily make it RELIGIOUS. M. Night made Gibson's character a spiritual man by trade, but maybe it was only to hit us on the head with the point. It's possible to have faith that there are mysteries in the universe without believing it was a god-like figure that put them there. It's the same dilemma as posed in Contact, and please forgive the director's if they were not able to provide you with a definitive answer to the universe's ultimate questions. I give them kudo's for not boring us with, although entertaining when well done, made-up anomolies and technologies such as the Star Trek series are famous for.
On a different note, one person here had a very interesting take on the movie that I thought was interesting - they thought that the whole movie was a dream of the little girl's, Bo. There was a scene in the very beginning that was never explained where she ask's her Dad, after just finding the crop circle "What are you doing in my dream?". At the time, I took it to mean that SHE thought she was dreaming still and not actually awake. But the case could be made that the whole movie was a child's nightmare after her mother's death, therefore explaining some of the immature aspects of the movie, like foil on their heads to keep aliens from reading minds, aliens that are threatening and creepy yet not fully realized, her father's child-like loss of faith despite his training, and a lack of information from the outside world about the goings on of military action etc. This would truly be in the vein of M. Night's directorial style. Maybe M. Night is having a royal laugh over all of us trying to "figure it out". Maybe that's the point.
Either way, it was scary enough to keep me looking over my shoulder for a few days. I just can't get that scene out of me head when they are in the basement and the hand comes out of the grate to grab the kid. Totally predictable, but flawlessly chilling! I can't wait to see it again.