This movie starts off interestingly enough and stays that way for a while, but soon the plot heads Hellward. There are some awesome disaster scenes scattered about, all of which happen to include people running around on fire or being smashed to death by man-made vehicles gone awry, but they don’t even begin to make-up for all the numerical nonsense happening elsewhere in this two-hour yawner.

Part of the problem isn’t that it tries to cover several sci-fi subgenres at once, but that it does so clumsily, going from paranormal thriller to disaster flick to religious allegory only when it’s convenient to the plot. Marco Beltrami’s over-the-top score isn’t appreciated until the end, during a muted scene in which the jovial orchestration doesn’t at all fit with what’s happening on screen but sounds terrific nonetheless.

my rating : 2 of 5

2009