Nose bleeds will never be the same again. Seriously.
Spoilers ahead.
Being a "Twilight Zone" fan, I expected an interesting take on the original story (which I found intriguing). Under the "right" circumstances, every person has a price, meaning everybody would "push the button", whether it's for money, love, knowledge, youth or something else. That makes it a good premise, but the movie wants to be "deeper", cooler and more complex. It's complex, alright.
What they do here is take dull biblical concepts like hell, afterlife and "eternal damnation" and mix it with Jean Paul Sartre's existentialism (spelled out like for 10-year-olds), aliens from outer space, dead people resurrected, Arthur Clarke references, a love story, zombies, dumb sci-fi and some simplistic lectures on ethics. Dialogues are bad and the CGI is so obvious, it makes Langella's face ridiculous. This is "Mars Attacks meets The Day the Earth Stood Still meets Saw meets Knowing and God knows what else".
Plot elements are thrown in randomly and nothing makes sense. Why is it set in 1976? Why are those particular families targeted? How does the box work? Why does the babysitter have pictures of the victims in her room? Why do aliens give a sh*t about humans in the first place? If these aliens are so "ethical" (funny idea), then why do they use such sadistic methods? If the purpose of the "test" is only to evaluate people's altruism quotient, than why torture them afterwards with complicated mind games? Why not just wipe them out? Why do aliens use a dead man with a facial disfigurement to perform their "tests"? What about the "lighting"? Who exactly are the "employers"? Why those particular "employees" and what happened to them? Why do aliens want to "save" human kind and yet make people kill each other? Why do they harm innocent children? What was the government's involvement? Was that kid with the "evil grin" and the peace sign supposed to be scary? Or that old lady in the library with a nose bleed? What's up with all that water? How come this supposedly "struggling" family owns such an expensive car? And more important... What was the scriptwriter smoking when he wrote those lines?
More questions arise, and more offensive religious crap paves the way. Why are Women portrayed as the ones responsible for all the corruption in the world? I'm surprised they didn't insert the Devil cliché...oh, wait... Was Langella's character the devil? Is the Devil a Martian? Do Martians appreciate Jean Paul Sartre? Is it possible that Sartre was one of them ? Such complexity is overwhelming.
Spoilers ahead.
Being a "Twilight Zone" fan, I expected an interesting take on the original story (which I found intriguing). Under the "right" circumstances, every person has a price, meaning everybody would "push the button", whether it's for money, love, knowledge, youth or something else. That makes it a good premise, but the movie wants to be "deeper", cooler and more complex. It's complex, alright.
What they do here is take dull biblical concepts like hell, afterlife and "eternal damnation" and mix it with Jean Paul Sartre's existentialism (spelled out like for 10-year-olds), aliens from outer space, dead people resurrected, Arthur Clarke references, a love story, zombies, dumb sci-fi and some simplistic lectures on ethics. Dialogues are bad and the CGI is so obvious, it makes Langella's face ridiculous. This is "Mars Attacks meets The Day the Earth Stood Still meets Saw meets Knowing and God knows what else".
Plot elements are thrown in randomly and nothing makes sense. Why is it set in 1976? Why are those particular families targeted? How does the box work? Why does the babysitter have pictures of the victims in her room? Why do aliens give a sh*t about humans in the first place? If these aliens are so "ethical" (funny idea), then why do they use such sadistic methods? If the purpose of the "test" is only to evaluate people's altruism quotient, than why torture them afterwards with complicated mind games? Why not just wipe them out? Why do aliens use a dead man with a facial disfigurement to perform their "tests"? What about the "lighting"? Who exactly are the "employers"? Why those particular "employees" and what happened to them? Why do aliens want to "save" human kind and yet make people kill each other? Why do they harm innocent children? What was the government's involvement? Was that kid with the "evil grin" and the peace sign supposed to be scary? Or that old lady in the library with a nose bleed? What's up with all that water? How come this supposedly "struggling" family owns such an expensive car? And more important... What was the scriptwriter smoking when he wrote those lines?
More questions arise, and more offensive religious crap paves the way. Why are Women portrayed as the ones responsible for all the corruption in the world? I'm surprised they didn't insert the Devil cliché...oh, wait... Was Langella's character the devil? Is the Devil a Martian? Do Martians appreciate Jean Paul Sartre? Is it possible that Sartre was one of them ? Such complexity is overwhelming.