I squirmed a bit in my seat, but resolved to get back into the flow of the movie. Spielberg wouldn't let me.

The next bit, after said refugees start running away from the hill that they had just been climbing, was even worse. The random-seeming series of scenes with Tim Robbins (doing a fine job as a pleasantly creepy ambulance driver) didn't work well. Without giving away any of the surprises during his cameo, I will simply say that I didn't think any of it fit terribly well with the rest of the movie and whatever suspension of disbelief I had worked up was dealt a few more serious blows.

Minor spoiler alert: if you don't know how the story resolves, it is revealed in the following paragraph. Read at your own risk.

From there on, the pace slowed, the movie made less and less sense, all up until the anti-climactic climax where the tripods catch colds and start dying--a point at which I was really wanting to leave the theater. The refrain kept playing through my head: are we there yet? Unfortunately not, though.

End spoiler.

The worst part of the movie is couched directly between the demise of the invaders and the wonderfully voiced epilogue. As a sappy, Christmas card ending, it rivals the ending to Spielberg's AI for being ludicrous and out of touch with the rest of the story. Hideous.

I walked out of the theater, mostly having forgotten all the good bits up front, happy to be leaving, and not particularly satisfied. Still, there is much to be said for those first two acts and a lot of enjoyment to be had in those special effects and all-engrossing sound effects that make the invaders seem remarkably realistic and terrifyingly otherworldly. In the end, I didn't feel like I had completely wasted my money.

There was a point, toward the beginning, where I thought that I'd want to buy the DVD; by the time I left the theater, that urge was gone. It could've been much better.