Would you hide? Where would you hide? What would you feel?

Rating: 9/10 (5 August 2005)

I have just seen War of the Worlds and was quite impressed by the whole thing, especially by how immersive it was. That's why I was a bit shocked to read through some of the comments on here, realizing that most of the other spectators did not seem to see in the movie what I was seeing.
I have to admit that I did neither read the novel or watch the first movie from the fifties, yet, which is why I saw this movie as a piece on its own  without comparing it to whatever it might have or should have been.
Immersion and contrast are the key aspects of this movie and I believe some of the spectators whose comments I read on here were expecting a little too much entertainment from the movie with their huge popcorn boxes in their left and the soft-drink in their right while they were sitting in the soft cushions of their cinema-chair. This movie is not about entertainment (apart from its end perhaps) but about fear and panic and it uses the contrast between our everyday world with its everyday people  their little problems, highly structured and relatively secure lives  and the complete opposite  absolute chaos, disorder and cruelty to create a tension that I have rarely experienced in a movie lately. In a way, I believe it might be a fairly good remake of the original radio-play, with only one difference: obviously the listeners/spectators have changed, becoming way too numb to let themselves getting taken away by the flow of the disturbing story that is being presented to them.
I will not discuss acting skills or questions concerning whether a camera should have worked or a sandwich was to slide in this or that direction. That's not the point in this movie. Either and especially not character relations and relationship building. Its not a story about Ray Ferrier and his family, but about you, you and you there in the background with the baseball cap. About everyone of us  as ordinary (or extraordinary) as we may be. What would YOU do if your damn normal life - where you can watch movies, go to work, drive a car, discuss movies on the internet, meet friends, play sports, use a phone, catch a bus  whatever  would change into complete chaos  no power, no water, no internet, no phone, no mobile phone, no car, bus, taxi, plane - no structure at all. Just the high probability of death looming behind every corner you come around. How would you react? Would you hide? Where would you hide? What would you feel?
These where the questions that I asked myself during or after the movie, but I believe it takes some immersion to reach this state of mind. And what is the best tool to create immersion on the side of the spectator  right!  well done special effects that stay in the background, supporting the development of the story instead of dominating it. War of the Worlds does a very good job concerning this aspect, I believe, as the special effects stay clearly in the background, with the camera concentrating on the actors and their reactions to the unfolding drama, which is  as I believe  beautifully gruesome put in place visually.
I could sometimes even realize how the people must have felt during WW2 (and other wars)  even better than in most (anti-)war-movies, that is - as the whole scenario is deeply rooted in today's world and showed how (relatively) easy it is to make a well structured society collapse from order to complete disorder and chaos in the instant of a minute. The Nazi-like coldness of the aliens and the allegories to the holocaust did increase that feeling furthermore.
All in all I would say that it is a very good movie, as it made me think a lot. And I tend to like movies that make me think On the other hand I cannot say how much this feeling is rooted in the content of the original novel and how much it is based on the movie itself. But as I said, I believe it is placed in the world of 2005 very well, enabling you to see the whole disturbing drama almost from a first perspective point of view  if you are willing to take that position, that is ;)