User Reviews

First off, let's start with a given: Anyone so chest rippingly stupid as to actually compare this micro-budget fiasco with the Spielberg behemoth needs to have scorpions dangled into their eyeballs. For a long, long time.

This is a movie brought to us by the magnificently awful The Asylum production house, most of whose output is a direct cash-in on other major Hollywood releases; Transmorphers, The Day the Earth Stopped, The Da Vinci Treasure etc.

Written by, directed by, starring in, driven to the multiplex by, hawked on street corners by the wonderfully excitable and relentlessly twitchy C. Thomas Howell (he's been in real shows you know (24, Coronation Street, ER, The Big Fat Lie) the story here picks up 2 years after the cataclysmic events of the big budget elder brother. The Martians are gone, wiped out by the microbes that so handily came to humanity's rescue, but Howell's George Herbert is none too convinced, and constantly monitors 'channels' to keep an ear out for any "ULLAH!" from outer space. As luck would have it, it's not long before The Walkers are back and, within the blink of an eye, one of the mighty robotic tripods has swept his son away, providing him with the mission required for the movie to continue.

Oh, thrown into the mix is some guff about time / space portals, a faux Earth fashioned by The Martians to fool our heroes, and a nice line in organic spacecraft interiors fashioned via the medium of pink blankets covered in cling film, and you've got the general idea.

Cheap as chutney, but to be admired for the sheer audacity of the rip-off, as well as the film-makers clear ambition (we can't afford to make it, but by The Christ's we're going to make it anyway), I say ignore the naysayers and check this out sci-fi geeks. You might just enjoy it as much as I did.

This is a pretty bad movie, but is still enjoyable in a certain sense, and is definitely one of the better Asylum films. The first Asylum WOTW is pretty good. This one is not, but who cares.

The CG is spotty. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, sometimes the tripods don't have shadows. Stock footage is used over and over again.

The sets are... spotty as well. The interiors of the tripods seem out of a 1960's Doctor Who episode. The interiors of the human ships are quite good.

The music is nonexistent. Don't bother buying any soundtrack.

The acting is... you guessed it... spotty. Most people are bad, one soldier character was obviously written as comedy relief but came across as Jar Jar's kid brother, but C. Thomas is pretty good in his role.

At last, the script. IT MADE NO SENSE. It was poorly written. When the aliens arrive, it was like they were already there. Because we don't see them arrive. We just assume they do, and we don't see very many. The lines are terrible at times. There were too many conveniences... It sucked.

It is a terrible movie. But you should watch it if the alternative is to watch a sci fi channel flick.

War of the Worlds - the one with Howell in it (yes the cheap, crap, exploitive knock off of Spielberg's movie) was in a word - 'terrible'. This was worse.

Even as I write this review, I am finding it hard to comprehend how you could get a worse film than the first one because that was truly terrible. But this attempt does not do anyone's career any good here.

Where do I start? I'll just throw some random thoughts out - in no specific order:

• The movie looks cheap. I've seen better sets in a school play.

• The acting is terrible. The blond scientist - although looking good - is especially wooden with an accent to grind your ears. Howell himself wasn't too bad - but let's not get carried away here either - he wasn't good. But compared to what was around him - he deserves an academy award.

• The direction was poor - some nice road movie shots but other than that - my 2 pre-teen sons could direct better than this.

• The CGI was crap. I've seen better CGI on an Atari in the 1980's. The laser beams from the ships approach to Mars would have been better drawn in by hand.

• The Plot??? What plot??? I could not follow it....Martians invade and went away but they didn't really go away - we are just living in a version of Earth they created so they can monitor us? What? In the first film - when the Walkers zapped you - your skin was ripped from your body and you died there and then. Somehow this has changed for the second film - you don't die, instead you are brought aboard and encased in a tendril-like shroud whilst the aliens suck the blood from you - or something stupid like that anyway. Plus - Howell is searching for his son and manages to find him the minute he gets voluntarily zapped by a Walker? How convenient is that? These Walkers have taken over the world - yes, 'the world', a big place, but yet Howell finds his son encased in the very same walker that zapped him!!! Come on!!!

• Some more random thoughts:

• Howell's travelling buddy was supposed to be comic relief - but only ended up annoying.

• The fighter pilots travel from earth to mars by remote control as they have no power supplies. Don't ask. One guy crash-lands on Mars (which is an earth look-a-like in a martian petri-dish). Don't ask. The plane is burnt to a crisp yet is able to take off after some off-screen repairs and fly back to the real earth with an extra 4 passengers. Don't ask. Because there are no answers!!! Just plain ridiculous.

• Technobabble - it's all here: frequencies, wormholes, time-travelling, alternate realities - you name it - they throw it in. But it's all so confusing and poorly done - it turns the viewer right off.

• The way in which Howell kills the martians - by injecting a small amount of his own blood which is infected by something or other (I cannot remember what) is ludicrous in the extreme.

• The ending lets it wide open for a part 3.... PLEASE DO NOT MAKE IT !!! I BEG OF YOU PLEASE!!!!!!

I've stated before that I have always like Howell as an actor - but why does he do this stuff? If I was a struggling actor with no gigs and nothing to survive on but my McDonald's wages and whatever food I can snaffle from the kitchen there - I'd still turn down this movie. Doing stuff like this is career suicide !!! How can he stand up alongside his peers and look them in the eye? Embarrassing to the extreme. But I fear he has gone so far down that rabbit hole now - he ain't ever gonna see the light !!!

2/10.

Erm...Where do I begin? The acting is amateur at best. The editing is whimsical, there are times in the movie when what is going on on the screen does not correlate with what the characters are saying (you'll know exactly what I mean if you watch it, it's appalling!).

Don't be expecting the same quality special effects as the first one - no, we are talking little better than early Doctor Who special effects.

The storyline will have Orson spinning in his grave. I have seen much better production values on YouTube (I'm serious! It's that bad). This is quite possibly the worst possible sequel that could have been made to follow an already dodgy first movie.

Any redeeming features? It ended, that was pretty good....

I could give a better critique of a piece of corn filled "Mr. Hankey" than I can this abomination. This cinematic abortion held me fascinated because I couldn't believe that there wasn't a single coherent moment for me to grasp onto during the time I lost from my life enduring it. That someone actually spent money (badly) on a movie that no one could take any pride in is amazing. Give any aspiring YouTube generation Science Fiction geek 1/100th of those funds and you could get something that was at least palatable and possibly inspired. No, they had to fill some greedy pockets with the cash they should have spent on, oh say PLOT, or character development or even a pity payment to the estate of poor H. G. Wells. Who has to be suffering the curses of the damned watching his legacy being tortured to an untimely death in the name of, well I can't think of what they were trying to do with this piece of vomit. The abuse of scientific language made my head spin and yet like a multi-car pileup with vivid carnage and destruction I couldn't turn away hoping that I wasn't suffering some stress induced stroke and hallucinating my ass off in preparation for my impending death.