Desperately slow to begin with and generally shockingly amateurish

Rating: 2/10 (5 August 2002)

Spoiler Alert So this is a Mell Gibson movie with a sci-fi twist. Budget should be no problem! Dialogue and screenplay should be what you've come to expect from a Mel movie right! Wrong! very wrong! This is one move that really sucks, more even than Reign Of Fire and that was fairly poor, though an enjoyable romp.!
The movie's first half an hour is desperately slow moving and while it has its few tense moments they dissolve into farcical, amateur-dramatic, almost slap-stick conclusions that you somehow cannot believe were quite intentional. Accordingly, the fantasy of the movie is shattered and you are left squirming in your seat wondering how Mel Gibson could have allowed himself to be part of something quite so awful. And those are the memorable bits! My companion was soundly asleep by the time the movie was half way through and had to be awakened when things started to hot up.... eventually.
I am not an out and out "Action movie" fan, far from it in fact. And I was certainly not under the illusion that I was going to see an action movie here. But the vignettes and cameos that are littered throughout this movie almost in the style of a French low-budget production simply fall far short of the mark, often adding nothing to the plot and giving the impression that the director was being totally self indulgent for no reason at all. All very shameful.
The latter portion of the movie does at times manage to achieve a significant level of edge-of-the-seat suspense, but most often manages to loose it somewhere near the climax leaving the audience feeling somewhat cheated and let down. And the screening of an alien in the final few minutes of the movie is sadly reminiscent of an awful B-Movie, rubber-clad actors flapping cardboard fins around whilst trying to convince us they are hostile marine life from the bottom of the sea. Complete nonsense and a big let down.
The movie deals with a hot-topic and one that could easily have engendered a spine crawling horror at the thought of the Earth being invaded by aliens bent on body snatching. And to be fair, from time to time this film does make the audience squirm in its seat with fear of the unseen invaders. But most often, it gets its jump scenes from sudden dog barks and views of door knobs being turned from the other side by the hand of the invader. For the same budget and using the same ideas, it could have all been too scary for words leaving a traumatized audience having nightmares for weeks and wondering who is really "out there" at night. In this case though, its just lame. Go see something else instead.