The Can't Quite Transform Into A Solid Movie

Rating: 7/10 (21 January 2019)

7 July 2007. Overall, this movie is a bit of puzzle, and the lack of clear consistent directing is evident from what appears to be a script that seems to have been written by several different writers with different ideas as to what this movie should have been about. While most of the production values and cinematic photographic and sound effects are powerful and compelling, they can't make up for the apparent collapse of the movie midway in where what appeared to a be a fairly serious Carpenter's remake of "The Thing" (instead of living beings turning into monsters we have here things turning into monsters - almost as scary), the movie transforms partway into a more dumbed down version of juvenile lightness and then back to seriousness. There are the obvious emotional buttons pushed where a little girl is faced with a big bad monster, we have a little monster that is both cute and wicked like a "Gremlin." There are several logical gaps and unbelievable lapses in reasonable belief that distract from the movie. In total, this movie could have been a lot better, one of the best of the year (quite notable for this genre), but instead we are held to a collage of different subplots and sometimes add up to confusion and a dizzying array of special effects that take away from the solid underlying theme of the movie. Seven out of Ten Stars.