A cathartic experience! WARNING: SPOILERS!

Rating: Null/10 (26 September 2002)

The movie has its scary parts, and the good thing about them is that they provide a cathartic experience. I came home from the movies, and frankly, many times, I'm afraid of the dark outside the house late at night. But, this time when I came back, there was this vision of Mel Gibson's brother in the film swinging his baseball bat at the alien, and I felt much more confident than ever before. Sure, I used to be frightened of ghosts, but nowadays that is factored in the "aliens" category, and bashing up an alien surrogately on film did provide therapeutically cathartic wonders for me in that it rid me of some of my fears. So, I'll say, if anybody has such kind of fears, take them to see this film, and they'll be better off, and they'll thank you for the relief.
As regards the plot, I wish they'd gone into some more depth on crop circles. In the film, the crop circles are merely an incidental feature. Perhaps, this and the other omissions [many of them are catalogued in the other reviews] are on account of the impressive CV of M.Night, and his triple role as writer, producer and director, that may have deprived him of much valuable feedback that could have enhanced his script.
I'll give only 2/5 for story development, but 4/5 for the screenplay, 'coz despite its defects its really good in terms of plot, character and conflict, and 4/5 for direction [maybe it could be 5/5, I am not that expert in critiquing directorial abilities, screenplays are my forte].