The Next Wave

Rating: 9/10 (11 July 2005)

While not my favorite of Spielberg's films, I think it will prove to be one of the most lasting, far more so than Amistad or Hook or even Minority Report. The critical and public reaction to it has, for the most part, amazed me; for the part of critics, few had more than a couple of hours to write their reviews before publication, and for audiences, it is far from two hours' of escape, anything but Jaws-from-the-skies. It takes some time, and stomach, to digest. (Two of the more astute considerations are Jim Sheridan's and Ray Pride's). For my part:
If the visitors of Close Encounters and E.T. can be easily construed as divine, the aliens in War of the Worlds are demons of a godless apocalypse. If the supernatural, then, is not benevolent, what remains (indeed, the first building we see destroyed is a church)? Sheer, random survival. This movie poses no solution, no comfort, no solace in anything but, as in the novel, the mysterious machinations of biology. While not philosophically rigorous, it contains more ideas and overt connections than are usually forgiven (or even noticed in) a summertime blockbuster even the humor is more complicated. Contrast the emergency- broadcast-system gag with the objects-in-mirror-are-closer-than-they-appear one in Jurassic Park; the latter is simple, release-valve irony, while the former is a multi-layered exposure of the uselessness of human measures. "Worlds" contains many explicit allusions and references to Spielberg films, but is almost entirely devoid of his typically light touch, freely plundering his customary clichés. "Think you're safe?" he's accusing. "You're not." The direct references to 9/11 and the present crises are surprising, even disconcerting in a commercial film, but they are far from glib or opportune; despite their presence in a sci-fi flick, they (and the movie itself) are quite serious. Unease at their inclusion comes more from their absence in popular culture; the question is why haven't they, nearly four years later, been invoked MORE often? Spielberg knows that they're further under our skin than we care to admit. War of the Worlds is the first creative, intentional response, in commercial film, to the new terrors under which we live.
Its obligatory "happy" ending seems an unfortunate concession to box-office, but doesn't arrive with fanfare, heroism, or even the arbitrary back-lit reunion scene. The only sure cause for celebration is survival. Perhaps no event in our culture has yet taken our 21st century fears so seriously and turned them back on us so unsparingly. War of the Worlds is not, to quote one viewer on the latest superhero suck-up, "easy to enjoy and see again;" it is a horror movie, pure and simple and unforgiving, with as much to stir and indict an audience as it has to expose and fascinate.