Since I find crop circles interesting, I made the mistake of going to see this movie yesterday...without taking the trouble to find out first that it is a dumb, paranoid, horror flick with an incredibly tedious script.

For sheer turtle-like pacing, only "The Thin Red Line" can surpass this movie. This is done supposedly in order to build up suspense (yawn). Well, it is fairly suspenseful, if you can accept the basic premise...that aliens would invade the Earth, using crop circles for a very unlikely purpose, and conducting said invasion in a very unlikely and not terribly effective manner...despite having the technology (one assumes) to get here in large numbers in the first place.

It's stupid.

The aliens, whom we get barely a glimpse of (that's part of the suspense, folks) are naked, really ugly and vicious, and colored in a really hideous shade of green.

It figures. Why do aliens in crummy movies always come in a hideous shade of green, and why are they naked? Surely someone using high technology would be likely to be wearing some kind of clothing or harness, wouldn't they? You've almost got to do that, if you are dependent on technological gadgets to do various things. You need pockets, belts, etc...in order to manage the gadgets when they're not in your hand. Duh. It's animals that go around naked, not advanced civilized races capable of interplanetary travel.

The aliens are also easily defeated by ordinary small town Ay-mericans, despite being physically far more adept than we are...etc... Sigh. One wonders why they even tried?

Add to this a family with the charm of a constipated octopus, two little kids who are supposed to be really kind of sweet but act so weird and say such totally unlikely things that you would think THEY are the invading aliens...

And Mel Gibson, playing a wounded ex-priest who has lost his faith and fallen into cynicism...but has it restored at the eleventh hour...

Who are the people who write these scripts? That's what I want to know. Why are they still working? Why did the girl behind me keep screaming every time something happened suddenly (after 15 minutes of s-l-o-o-o-w-w buildup to the obvious next crisis, and lots of darkness)?

This movie makes every crass attempt possible to manipulate your emotions and increase your paranoia. It is a completely worthless effort that has nothing to do with crop circles or aliens, but with the illusions of 21st century America about itself. There really isn't one character in the movie who is even likeable...they all act weird and say very odd things. You begin to wish the aliens would take over. It might be an improvement.

Don't waste your money on it. I give it 1 and 1/2 stars. My review is a public service on behalf of anyone I can reach via this forum.

- LH