Great sound, scare-inducing ridiculousness

Rating: 5/10 (16 November 2006)

Steven Spielberg's 2005 "War of the Worlds," is an audio tsunami featuring the greatest subwoofer mix ever to make its way on to a DVD. You'd better hope that fans don't decide to all play the film at the same time and turn the sound up because every embedded fault line in America would shift.
The sound design is outstanding. It is meticulously detailed, elaborately separated and directionalized. It is jacked up on its own before your personal speaker system even comes close to it. There is both a 5.1-channel Dolby Digital track and a sharper, more shearing DTS track. When they let loose, everything shakes. Yet there is color to the bass line as well, with different types of low-level vibrations for different situations and different levels of impact. It is so well put together that even the silences are exciting.
And there are images and a story to go with the sound. Spielberg's ending -- not H.G. Wells' -- is obnoxious as all get out, but there is a point at about the 99-minute mark where Tom Cruise's character gets sucked into an alien ship. If you just imagine that everything which happens after that point is an "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"-type dream, then the ridiculousness of it all doesn't bother you nearly as much.
The whole movie has less scientific logic than a Republic serial, but it does, more importantly, capture the massive, unnerving and downright fear-inducing atmosphere of a nightmare exquisitely well. I must admit that, like jestdecerts, I too was reminded of riding Chicago's Clark Street bus.
The one other component that allows the 117-minute feature to hold your attention and keep stringing you along is the young Dakota Fanning, who plays Cruise's daughter. Acting in earnest, her performance constantly recenters your attention to the emotional core of the story and keeps you interested in the fates of the characters. It is only because she cares about Cruise that you do.