Review of War of the Worlds (2005) by Anuj S — 30 May 2015

War of the Worlds shocked me with the suspense it had to offer. This is a lot better than I thought it was going to be even though it IS directed by Steven Spielberg. The last 3/4 of War of the Worlds was extremely suspenseful and seriously fun to watch.

The special effects and settings are pure eye candy even if the cinematography does seem kind of tinted. The story follows Tom Cruise as Ray, a divorced dad who has lost touch with his kids and during the weekend he has them, the world starts to crumble and their lives are in serious danger.

The story kind of takes a turn in terms of what it wants to be about. What starts out as a family bonding situation goes into a fight for your life scenario and doesn't balance out as well as I thought it could.

In the end I felt like there could have been more development between Ray and his kids and their relationship because they never really got the chemistry they needed to make them feel like they really were attached to each other.

The family does have their moments for sure, but with all the exciting alien action it's hard to focus on one plot line. Adding this element into the film didn't ruin anything I just feel like there should've been more character development.

The acting was pretty good, Tom Cruise was great which was to be expected, and Dakota Fanning was pretty good too but she got on my nerves sometimes. There was this recurring thing that the characters would say to get another character's attention.

They'd say "hey" then a bit louder and then louder and normally I don't care if they do that like twice but they did this a LOT. It got obnoxious actually. The highlights of this film however were the amazing visual effects and the great action scenes.

These combined together made for some really intense and suspenseful scenes and was a lot of fun to watch. As for the ending, it was pretty bittersweet but I thought that it was really the right way to handle the relationship between Ray and his kids.

War of the Worlds was a lot of fun, although it did have kind of a flip flop story and weak character development, it still is a great time and an above average disaster film. B+.