SPOILER ALERT: I have to be honest. This is going to be the shortest movie review I’ve ever written so far.
Here’s a simple premise. When it comes to putting a story together that involves the USA and an alien invasion, it is so cliche.
We’re thrown into the deep end of the film, at the start. We briefly meet a helicopter full of US Marines, shitting themselves. Explosions all around, close to hyperventilating. Our soon-to-be hero Staff Sargeant Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) is concentrating and thinking hard. Then an explosion hits the helicopter. Some shaky camera frames – the screen goes back and we’re thrown to 24 hours before that scene. Straight away, the audience is confused.
We meet our future US Marine heroes. One is getting married, one is a family man with a kid on the way, the younger ones are out boozing and picking up chicks for a one-night hoorah, one has lost a brother in a previous war. All with shaky camera frames. In the background on every television set, news reports are explaining that there have been undetectable meteors entering earth’s atmosphere, slowing down before they impact. Impossible. In true Cloverfield style, the shaky camera angles make it difficult to work out what is going on.
Next thing you know, Los Angeles is under attack by what appear to be aliens. BAM! The Marines are thrown into combat. Los Angeles is clouded in smoke, houses and shops are abandoned, and only a handful of Marines are left. They are fighting against alien beings which the storyline provides no explanation whatsoever.
If anything more is written, the whole basis of the story is given away. Plot-holes ahoy, enjoy it for the senseless action and what feels like you need to take in your game controller in. Forget about how there’s a civilian they rescue that happens to be a vet and starts dissecting a dead alien to find a way of killing it, or the slow death of a father in front of a child, or any other explanation behind anything whatsoever. The only entertaining part was the 2 hours worth of orchestral music.
In fact, it was 2 hours of my life I want back.
Anything else I write is just paying this movie a compliment.
Think Independence Day with Cloverfield with the bullshit of Pearl Harbor.
Or, the hype of Skyline, minus the storyline.
[xrr rating = 0.5/5]
