War of the Worlds: The Attack is the latest adaptation of the classic novel. It’s an ultra low budget flick that makes an effort to translate the book to modern England… but it’s sabotaged on all sides by incompetence.

The main issue is that the film is totally listless. The director, editor, and actors had no idea how to inject excitement, thrills, tension, or suspense into the film. It just… plods along without any energy at all. Not once did the filmmaking rise to the occasion… not once did it feel like an alien invasion was underway, not once did the actors appear particularly scared or even perturbed by the events.

I was going to give some extra credit for some decent low budget visual FX. The Martian tripods look pretty decent for the budget and some of the visual effects shots aren’t too bad. But they also result in massive incongruity with the live action segments. It’s as though sometimes they remembered to add the FX, sometimes they forgot and sometimes nobody pointed out the dialog doesn’t actually make sense.

The biggest guffaw is when they reveal how the Martians are beaten. It’s the most ham-fisted dialog from a character who just wanders onto set. It’s shockingly laughable in a film that actually opened with a decent narration of the opening lines of the book.

This is about as bad as you’d have predicted… but I’d hoped for a miracle and just didn’t get it. The flick is dull, sluggish, and boring.

Score: 52