Entertaining movie, with a few flaws

Rating: 7/10 (1 July 2005)

The movie is dark, creepy and definitely a "retro" monster movie. but if you can get past that, its an entertaining 2 hours. Not Oscar material, but fun in its own way. Its shot all from the POV of Cruise's character, which is a cool device, but at times is annoying as you just want to "peek" over the hill to see the mayhem that is going on there. But it did make you feel like you were there, and helped to bring the terror of facing these monsters.
A couple of nitpicks: 1) the scene in the basement where they are hiding from the probe tentacle is mostly a ripoff of the Jurasic Park scene where the kids are hiding from the raptors. I can't see making an homage to your own movie (unless you are pretty stuck up that is) so it comes across as self serving at best, or just plain lazy.
CGI...sigh. I know I'm screaming into the wind here, but enough with the CGI everything. Remember when Sci-Fi vehicles and creatures looked real? Yeah, me too, back when they didn't rely on CGI to make them.
All in all, a fun movie worthy of being seen on the big screen.