Mediocre clichéd fare saved by ending.

Rating: Null/10 (17 September 2008)

I rented this knowing nothing about it and while I was pleasantly surprised by elements of it which could have made it great, it suffered from too many of the flaws common to American films.
First of all, it became evident all too quickly that the film was populated by fairly standard, shallow clichéd characters which is somewhat unfortunate given that it focuses mainly on their interaction, the only one of them to rise above the mundane was the insane Christian woman, but sadly the American obsession with ramming religion (positively or negatively) down our throats is a cliché in itself and her character became so mind numbingly irritating so quickly that she became a tedious annoyance who took far to long to die.
On the positive side, anyone who's played 'Half life' should enjoy the monster scenes and atmosphere, I understand the game was partly based on the novel, but the film is undoubtedly, in imagery and sound, influenced by the game, and the idea that the town has been engulfed by a bizarre alien world seeping through to our own works pretty well.
With all of this together I'd have given this a 5 at best but then we come to its contentious ending. Had they shoehorned in a happy one while my favourite 'Dead can dance' song was playing I'd have been seriously annoyed, but no, a director had the balls to give us a rare, quite horrific ending in an American film and it was absolutely wonderful. A memorable sequence which raised this from an average time waster to something I'd actually recommend.