This is about societal breakdown, not monsters. It's dark and very well handled

Rating: 8/10 (13 November 2019)

This is a strange one for me, because it's Directed by someone of immense talent but who has a tendency for manipulative over-emotive schmaltz. And it has Cruise, who has become corny in the simulcrum of himslef, that he always plays. But, I think it is a really exceptional movie, in that, it is deeply deeply dark for the most part. From the cold elimination of people at the beginning to the breakdown of society in the second act. Outside of the screaming and high drama scenes...this is the pure hell, when all values evaporate around you. It was truly disturbing and I'm sitting there saying to myself: this is built on a short story by an old Victorian British gent (H G Wells) and it's got stupid long-leeged spacehips and monsters...but I'm being emotionally tossed and turned by the breakdown of ordinary society. I think Spielberg here, really might be examining Nazism and it's cold brutality and how it drained all normal human relations - in that regard some of these scenes tore my heart much more than Schindler's did. There's even echoes of Apocalypse Now atmospherics in some scenes. I like that Spielberg made Cruise's Son a difficult character who was uncooperative. I like that Cruise was essentialy a failed Father. The film had to fall at the very end, because Well's ending is weak and wooly anyway. The only way to conclude, seemingly, was to show a daft alien creature and it's stupidly ironic demise - that's just the unfortunate challenge of filming a classic book. Put that to one side, Cruise was damned good in this movie (conversely Tim Robbins was useless.. but it was just a cameo, thankfully) Spielberg was masterful.