A vaguely promising film, a description based only on the fact that I had no idea what it was about going in. This remains one of the best reasons to see a film. This should probably be a rule of some kind, the pleasure of walking into a film blind, with the hope that you won’t wish you were.

It has some intriguing bits, both as a success and a failure. The way in which the earth is destroyed in various waves of electronicness and water and such happens quickly and to the point. This is then minused the seemingly de rigeur and in this case unnecessary ‘six weeks earlier’ beginning. If you’re going to start destroying the world right away, you don’t need to show the audience that this is what’s coming. It’s almost like people now think all stories start at the end. Well, that is what they’re writing to.

One of the disadvantages of seeing the film blind is not realizing it was based on teen book, leading to another unnecessary inevitability: the ‘which boy should I choose’ moment. This trope is admirably hidden until the end, but is inescapable at the introduction of the two boys in the same room, all there to rescue her little brother, and all at the exact same time.

And staggering coincidence, that’s another one. Coincidence: good place to start a film, less so to end.

I really don’t hate Mr. Schreiber that much, but I’m very bored with what’s available in Brittany cinemas this week.

As I’ve said, before, missed opportunity is still an opportunity, and I liked the idea, however fucking obvious it was, that the aliens (disguised as humans) would train the kids to kill the remaining adults humans by tricking them into thinking the humans were aliens. Whew.

This very nice, and potentially disturbing in the best possible way, idea, utterly tanks here. The exception being the inclusion of Mr. Liev Schreiber, an actor who I always dislike (Orson Wells? Seriously?), but who is appropriate, and appropriately not that hot, as the baddie.

The way you save the story is like a nightmare for me: if Mr. Schreiber is the only alien. Alone, his plan to use the humans against each other makes sense, and furthermore has both tension and the dramatic possibility of sympathy with the Schreiber. Sadly, this is not the stuff of a three book, four movie series, and so we, and audiences everywhere, pass on the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Ninth and a half wave.