So willing to give this a go, age-old story almost impossible to do a bad job, even with a small budget.
However, they managed to fall at every opportunity.
The opening was OK, with a good standard of British TV affects, and using the original text in the voice over, but this quickly turned into a disaster (not in a good way)
1) the "kids" you get the feeling from the writing and the way they are acted, these are meant to be children who are maybe 12 to 15 years old, but they've cast actors who look and sound like adults in their 20s+.
2) the acting from everyone is so flat / bland / boring and clunky that you feel no jeopardy or sense of impending doooooom.
If anything the best acting in this is from the extras at the landing site.
3) military tells then not to use fueled vehicles as the aliens track onto the exhaust fumes, yet they are all going to get on a boat to escape, a boat with a fuel engine and exhaust?????
4) the professor has the most bazaar acent, one sentence is like a spin around the world.
5) special affects..... not the worst I've ever seen, infact the landing site at the start is OK, but scale of the delivery ships and the tripods is just off, so off it's very annoying.
It's just annoying that when you have other film versions of this story to get inspiration from, you just don't deliver a half decent paced story.
I know it had a small budget, but you really don't need a big budget to build suspense.
Also a little research into how emergency services and military operate would've helped.
The soldiers using their names on the radio, the police sergeant with diamond earrings, the soldiers radio loooking like it came from a 1980s toy shop just all felt cheap and not thought about.
Had hoped for so much more and got so much less.
Can't even enjoy this film ironically....
However, they managed to fall at every opportunity.
The opening was OK, with a good standard of British TV affects, and using the original text in the voice over, but this quickly turned into a disaster (not in a good way)
1) the "kids" you get the feeling from the writing and the way they are acted, these are meant to be children who are maybe 12 to 15 years old, but they've cast actors who look and sound like adults in their 20s+.
2) the acting from everyone is so flat / bland / boring and clunky that you feel no jeopardy or sense of impending doooooom.
If anything the best acting in this is from the extras at the landing site.
3) military tells then not to use fueled vehicles as the aliens track onto the exhaust fumes, yet they are all going to get on a boat to escape, a boat with a fuel engine and exhaust?????
4) the professor has the most bazaar acent, one sentence is like a spin around the world.
5) special affects..... not the worst I've ever seen, infact the landing site at the start is OK, but scale of the delivery ships and the tripods is just off, so off it's very annoying.
It's just annoying that when you have other film versions of this story to get inspiration from, you just don't deliver a half decent paced story.
I know it had a small budget, but you really don't need a big budget to build suspense.
Also a little research into how emergency services and military operate would've helped.
The soldiers using their names on the radio, the police sergeant with diamond earrings, the soldiers radio loooking like it came from a 1980s toy shop just all felt cheap and not thought about.
Had hoped for so much more and got so much less.
Can't even enjoy this film ironically....