rklein123

I watched this without knowing anything about it. And I enjoyed it. But I found it confusing.

I liked it enough to read the book, thinking it might explain some of the things I thought I missed understading in the film.

The film is visually excellent, creating a mysterious and foreboding sensibility. The book, however, excels in that department!

There are elements of the book, particularly at the end, that were much more fleshed out. In fact, while some of the scenes were similar, the book provided a context.

Both the movie and book are very good psychological thrillers, more than they are what I think of as "horror."

But the film adds a backstory that wasn't in the book which, ultimately, I found confounding. I don't think the ending of the movie was clear, because it was missing the larger context.

And I think that's why many reviews discredit the ending of the movie. It tries to squeeze the ending into a different context, and instill a different meaning that made less sense - at least to me.

I was left wondering... Who ARE these people? What's going on upstairs in that house? Are those things really moving? Are they alive?

The book makes all of those vague references in the movie crystal clear.

The movie stands well on its own, but the ending has some real shortfalls and gets confusing at the end.

Together, the book and the movie make a great team. The story in the book, and the visual enhancement of the movie = 10 stars.

Elijah Wood is really great to watch in this movie, but it's a weird film. The kids at a school go haywire after a virus spreads throughout the school yard, and then beyond.

The movie, and the real horror begins in a chicken farm (probably a free range enterprise, because the chickens are walking around inside).

A man catches one of the chickens, and we watch him wring the neck of the panicked bird, then cut off it's head, pluck its feathers, eviscerate it, and cut it up. Then, we see the meat exiting a meat grinder as a paste, and turned into a chicken nugget.

At the end of the film there is a statement that animals were not harmed in the making of the film.

If that's not weird, what is?

Perhaps kids used to be sacred cows in movies, but not this one. The kids are kicked, beaten, stabbed, shot in the face with baseballs, and one is even crushed by a moving vehicle.

This would never have happened in Leave It To Beaver, or the Donna Reed show. But clearly, kids are fair game these days.

The ending leaves the story hanging - suggesting a sequel must have been hoped for by the producers and/or director. But it's been 10 years, so I guess the no one thought the story really warranted resolution.

Overall, disappointing. For a movie about "the first day," which I assume refers to an alien invasion, people seemed to catch on pretty quickly to the fact that the aliens are attracted by sound. And that they cannot swim.

There are lots of different kinds of sounds. Voices, machines, the sound of hundreds of footsteps, of helicopters, and of thunder. The aliens seem to have selective hearing, and seemingly aren't attracted to all sounds.

The worst part of the movie is the cat. Not only does it disappear and then reappear, it always knows where to go and how to find the people it wants. The cat was just a 'too cute' shtick for a movie like this. And totally unbelievable in the context of the story.

There are lots of holes in this movie. Things that just don't make sense. For example, the geography of the city is ignored, as the protagonists leave China Town, which is way downtown, and then suddenly enter a subway station that says Lexington Avenue and 59th St, which is probably 3 miles north. People can be wet one second, and dry the next. Someone can swim in a river, and then pull a dry piece of paper out of their pocket. Magic.

The pizza was also a somewhat silly recurring theme. Just silly.