Incomparable to sci-fi thrillers

Rating: Null/10 (5 August 2002)

From reading many of the reviews here, I have noticed that many people want to rate this movie on the same scale as they have with movies like Predators and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
I suppose if you are looking for a shootem-up action movie, that might be a good selection. But consider the times we live in. This movie was released August 2002, post-9/11... an uprising of faith, patriotism, and family values seems to work its way into everything. People feel closer to this movie because it works around a small broken family in a rural setting. The actors are not overly attractive [I refuse to believe that Joaquin Phoenix is an attractive man - he looks like a thinner version of Jack Black.] It is the most unsophisticated kind of world. That is what makes such a movie successful. The Blair Witch Project was successful because it was not portrayed by actors and actresses like Halle Berry or Tom Cruise. Fear must be triggered by memory. How can one relate to something they feel could never happen to him/her personally? I don't know about anyone else reading these reviews, but I never thought I was a candidate to be hanging out with Alec Baldwin. Go figure.
Bo Hess. Yes, I believed she was an alien. I had this idea that perhaps everyone was wrong. It wasn't to annex the planet. It wasn't to simply kill the human race. I thought they had returned to collect what was rightfully theirs, the child. The water. The visions. The bizarre birth story.

The comic relief was horrible. My friend and I sometimes mocked the audience laughing at things such as the tin foil hats or the lame "she was about to vomit on me" story.
The philosophical/spiritual motif made the movie irritating at points in that it hardly exposed anything of intellectual value. Do you remember reading "A Piece of String" by Guy de Maupassant in your high school English class and discussing fatalism? I do. It's an idea that is run into the ground and deserves some air to breathe.
But I guess that's what America wants. God. The need to feel safe in some headstrong force.
And what was the deal with the end of the movie? The television report, "found an ancient technique to kill the aliens." Water? An ancient technique? Maybe I'm not as learned as most in world history? Are they talking about Chinese water torture? The great flood? When has water played a like role as a weapon in history? Is this some sort of biblical tale I slept through in Sunday School?
The asthma bit was too Panic Room-esque. Like the girl with the diabetes. They are trapped inside a room.. child needs medicine... leaves room to obtain medicine... villian ends up capturing child.
The movie also needed a better exposition. Graham Hess's brother is not properly introduced until 20 minutes into the movie. We don't really know who he is or why he is there. We don't really understand what happened to the mother until the director's cameo appearance.
I also lost the initial feeling I had upon seeing the aliens after I discovered that they had claws. The footage at the children's birthday party also seemed odd because one child was speaking English to the camera. I clearly heard the word behind. It seems that if the footage was filmed in Brazil, the children would be speaking Portuguese. The dramatic music I still feel was played to take away from the fact that the alien's appearance was sort of laughable. Although I guess if I were there and such a thing were walking around my yard, I would feel frightened by its size.

Even though I pick the movie apart, I still think it was a very good movie. Although it did not hold a candle to The Mothman Prophecies.