No you don’t need evil aliens for spiritual redemption. This just happens to the ‘spiritual redemption through alien invasion’ movie.
Right,a nd ifthe spiritual redemption had been believable, I’d have been fine with that; as it was, it was done in a trite, melodramatic manner that made me not care if they found there redemption and then, when they did, not believe that it was sincere or signifigant.
A man who had lost his faith through a bunch of little things and then regained it through a bunch of little things would have been much more meaningful. The whole "wife dies horribly = lose faith, survive alien invasion = regain faith thing was simply to obvious. If the little girl dies of cancer next year, he’ll lose his faith again, if he falls in love again–whoo-hoo, faith back!
Thanks for the spoilers, guys. They confirmed for me that this is a movie I can safely skip - it’s not up my alley.
Now, I just have to grow a spine so that I’ll finally watch “The Shining” or “Silence of the Lambs”. I’m trying to get over my phobia of horror flicks.
I liked the movie just fine. I was, however, dissapointed by the ending. I kept expecting a twist of the depth in the director’s other movies and it never came. (Sixth Sense and Unbreakable) There are some neat ideas in the film tho.
One problem I had with it was the fact that the lead character (Mel) looked like a Catholic priest. (White collar etc.) Are not priests forbidden to have sex and therefore not allowed to be married? Perhaps other religons have this attire for their priests. shrug
Whoa. I thought that was an incredibly powerful scene.
Different strokes, I guess.
I know that like I sound like a moron every time I say this, but the aliens were stupid because, as yosemitebabe says, the movie is not about aliens. M. Night Shyamalan is a smart guy. I am quite certain that he could have written a totally tight sci-fi alien invasion flick. But instead, the aliens were too weak to bust out of a broom closet and too dumb to notice that they were attacking a planet that is 2/3 covered with water. That says something, I think. It says that the aliens aren’t the point.
If the presentation is half-assed, why should I give any respect to the “point”?
(Note: I hated the “point” too, btw. Terrible movie.)
But Gibson’s character didn’t lose his faith until after his wife died, so in addition to “God works in mysterious ways” and “there are no coincidences”, the other message of the film should be “God yanks yer chain to make a point”? Is Shyamalan smoking dope while reading the book of Job? So the father had to lose his faith and his wife to save his family and get his faith back.
This relates to CalMeacham’s thread that deals with the film better than I could, but here goes. To those who posit that maybe the aliens had never encountered water before, or they were only vulnerable to the liquid state. So in all their travels and food gathering runs, they never encountered another form of life composed mostly of water, never found another planet with so much abundant water (in all three states, no less), never saw a comet, and didn’t encounter dew on the grass (or in the cornfields) at night once they got here?
As for the slaves, cannon fodder, or “hunting dog” explanations. This seems very inefficient for true food gathering, unless this was their version of hunting for sport or even falconry. If their masters could gentically engineer slaves who can produce and release poison gas from their bodies, why not produce the poison in large doses and supress all resistance in a given area? I don’t buy the trying to pick up a few snacks in isolated areas theory. Remember, one of them made it onto worldwide TV from that home video from Sao Paulo, Brazil - not exactly the sticks. So we did see more than one even if it was on the family’s TV. They sure weren’t being stealthy when the ships turned up on TV late in the film.
So even if the film isn’t “about aliens”, too much has to be explained away about them and other points in the story, as said earlier, which distracts the viewer and undermines the film.
As the IMDB points out, Gibson played an episcopalian priest, not a catholic one.
Bad movie though.
Not a great movie but some neat dialouge:
“There’s a monster in my room can I have a glass of water?”
Doesn’t hit you till the end that she wanted the glass of water to fight the alien.
I thought a better name for the movie should have been “ID4:Rural”