War of the Worlds (2005) | 100 Movies Every Catholic Should See #150

Directed by Steven Spielberg. Starring Tom Cruise.

If you look across the history of film, alien encounter films usually wrestle mostly with the titular aliens: how they look, how they act, what they want to do on Earth. Steven Spielberg always gives careful consideration to these same questions in his own alien movies — Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., War of the Worlds, and Disclosure Day — but they always take a backseat to the human concerns raised by the aforementioned aliens. Each and every time, his films have less to do with his stunning, otherworldly creations, and much more to do with how these creations emphasize just how alone or apart human beings really are.

In Close Encounters and E.T., the aliens helped to provide purpose and to unite people who otherwise felt lonely, disconnected, or afraid in their lives before the aliens arrived. That message — of love and empathy — echoed loud and clear across Spielberg’s filmography as cinema’s favorite optimist and sentimentalist continued to rule movie theaters and the box office over the course of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. But, at the turn of the 21^st century, everything changed.

September 11, 2001, affected everyone in profound ways — Spielberg included. In the wake of that devastating day, he tried to reckon with the horrors he witnessed in the only way he knew how: through the medium of movies. That desire led him back to the alien encounter genre for the first time in over 20 years, but this time with a far different message than he articulated in his first two alien pictures. Where Close Encounters and E.T. showed how aliens could save humanity from loneliness, his newest creation would instead show how aliens would only drive a further wedge in humanity, forcing people to turn to their basest instincts in the wake of unspeakable terror.

That intention turns 2005’s War of the Worlds into a full-blown panic attack of a movie, where cinema’s foremost master of the summer blockbuster returned to his old stomping grounds with something far darker, far bleaker, and more sinister than audiences ever could have anticipated.

I remember seeing War of the Worlds for the first time not in 2005 — my mom got wind of how dark it was and forbid it under any and all circumstances — but around 2009. What I expected to be a Tom Cruise-starring sci-fi action extravaganza, like most audiences at the time, ended up being one of the most terrifying moviegoing experiences of my life. The Spielberg I knew and loved had taken all of his filmmaking prowess and poured it into relentless set piece after set piece, ratcheting up the tension while simultaneously painting horrific image after horrific image with his filmmaking brush.

At the time of its release, War of the Worlds received a positive, if slightly more muted response. Less than four years separated from 9/11, critics and audiences were perhaps ill at ease with a story so clearly wrestling with everything America had just gone through. But as time has gone on, War of the Worlds has grown in estimation. It’s Spielberg at his most visceral — his first true “evil twin” movie since Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and it’s all the better for it.

His War of the Worlds, taking inspiration from the H.G. Wells book of the same name, follows Tom Cruise’s Ray, a blue collar, downbeat divorced dad, who has to protect his estranged kids when aliens invade Earth and seek to destroy all of humanity. The aliens here, unlike the friendly extraterrestrials of E.T., are literally called “terrorists” by the characters in this film, as they quickly devastate cities across the globe.

During their first attack, they vaporize the residents of Beyonne, New Jersey, leaving them as clouds of dust that cover Tom Cruise’s Ray during his escape. When he arrives back home and sees himself in the mirror, covered in dust, the intention is never more clear: this is Spielberg’s 9/11. What comes after shatters any hopeful notions of rah-rah nationalism in the wake of tragedy. Those horrific images I mentioned earlier? They come quickly and often. Bodies floating in a river. Crowds desperately trying to pack onto a ferry. Clothes raining down in a forest. A valley of blood. Even an incredible homage and reversal of The Wizard of Oz, where he swaps the wonder of that film revealing technicolor for the first time to an image of utmost horror.

Spielberg’s anger and fear in the wake of 9/11 is channeled with verve and propulsion throughout every set piece in War of the Worlds — ones that are both unspeakably huge in scale but also devastatingly intimate, making each subsequent situation only feel more hopeless for all the characters involved.

The craftsmanship on display is some of the best of Spielberg’s career, with all his usual heavy hitters – Janusz Kaminski on cinematography, Michael Kahn on editing, John Williams on score, Kathleen Kennedy on producing, and David Koepp on script — bringing their best to the table. The same is true of the performances. Cruise’s helplessness, fear, and relentless desire to protect his kids commands every frame (also, unfortunately, the worst baseball throwing you will ever see), while Dakota Fanning’s innocence and terror as Rachel, his daughter, is heartbreaking.

As the film barrels towards its conclusion, it wraps up perhaps too neatly given the devastation that preceded it. If you’ve read the book or seen previous adaptations, Spielberg chooses not to deviate from the original story, despite his previous changes in the lead-up to the final stretches. It can feel a bit deflating, but how it wraps up is also integral to the Spielberg philosophy: despite his anger, his horror, his fear, he refuses to leave audiences without a sense of hope that things can get better in the end. To conclude one of his films any other way would be a betrayal to himself and his core principles. Maybe not as satisfying as a wrap-up to a terror campaign of a film but still fascinating within the entire breadth of his filmography.

If Close Encounters was Spielberg wrestling with his purpose in life, and if E.T. was him discovering his love of children, War of the Worlds is him at his angriest and his most scared. Coming in the wake of 9/11, Spielberg channeled all of his feelings about the horror of that day into a sci-fi terror unlike anything in his filmography.

Humans are lonely. They’re broken. And in War of the Worlds, they have never been more ill at ease with how alone they truly are in the universe.

This is Spielberg at his absolute darkest. It terrified me the first time I saw it. It always will.