Good, but somehow disappointing.

Rating: 7/10 (7 September 2015)

We'd heard good things about this film so finally decided to buy it. With names like JJ Abrams and S.Spielberg in the credits, it had to be worth a look. The story concerns a group of school-friends from rather difficult family backgrounds who are making a small 8mm film about zombies. During the filming of one scene, a train de-rails and crashes spectacularly right around them (this sequence is incredibly powerful)and they barely get away with their lives. Then strange things begin to happen.... It's all good so far, and we had great fun spotting the references to Close encounters, ET and of course the mentions of 'Romero'. (SPOILERS FROM HERE) But the end of the film, when the alien creature finally completes its spaceship and leaves is glossed over very quickly and I failed to see just how the kids were in any way involved. Yes, the experience was unifying for the kids and their parents and as a kind of coming-of-age saga it works well, but the alien thread really was excess baggage. And (I may have blinked) what were the cubes for? I so wanted this to be a great film that I could watch over again, but somehow I think it'll sit on the shelf, and that's a shame.