What is it??

Rating: 4/10 (26 June 2011)

What is it? And I don't mean the monster. There's heavy lens flare usage in the beginning like "Star Trek", there's a mysterious rarely seen by the audience creature like "Cloverfield", and there's a touching, misunderstood alien like....well pick one of Spielberg's movies. And then there's the corny, misplaced ending as the alien slowly sails away into the sky.
But in all this mess director JJ Abrams can't seem to decide what he wants this film to be. And so it stumbles from one plot point to another as even the characters try to discern what should happen next. The Air Force evacuates the town, suddenly the monster has unearthly powers and causes tanks and missiles and gun fire to spin around destroying homes at random, suddenly the creature is back underground building....something he never uses in the end..??
All is not lost, however, as the acting of the two young leads Joel Courtney (Joe) and most notably Elle Fanning (Alice) steal the screen away from their counterparts in each and every scene. Hopefully we'll get to see much more of these two in the near future.
Entertaining enough I suppose, but certainly a let down after the majesty that was Abrams' "Star Trek" reboot. I guess in the end you just can't win them all...