War of the Worlds (2020)

The mood and story lines in the new season are more like those of a conventional mystery — there are police chases now — with the dramatic spice of a handful of characters knowing an earthshaking secret that they can’t talk about without being considered crazy. It’s a great situation for Byrne, whose grumpy, weary performance as Bill drives the show.

This miniseries isn’t quite the War Of The Worlds you’re familiar with, but it does seem to be looking like a fine apocalyptic survival story that at least has an ending, unlike some others that we’ve been watching on other cable channels for the past ten years.

Between the laconic pace and the intense focus on characters, Worlds is an alien invasion story that doesn’t spend much time fretting about its aliens beyond the characters whose jobs involve fretting about things. It’s much more interested in how people bond and persevere through shared trauma and survival instinct. ... But like any slow burn, Worlds reveals its charms over time, once the audience has shed any expectation of Overman following Wells’ blueprint.

The approach by Howard Overman (“Misfits”) is so joyless and even cruel that it becomes a dirge. ... The problem with monotony is it becomes impossible to care. Characters become disposable; their plight becomes superficial through the repetition. There’s a difference between something that’s intense and something that’s just brutally bleak. It almost feels like this “War” isn’t worth winning.

If you're a typical American with no patience, don't watch; but if you are willing to enjoy a solidly paced, well-acted, and brilliantly scripted story that will keep you guessing and scared, this is it. A terrific TV show that I hope comes back for a third season, even though the second ended perfectly.

I wanted to like this. Instead, I experienced an achingly boring and tedious slog watching neurotic, unsophisticated, and boring characters who would have been better served by succumbing by episode 2.

The first season was okay to good and left me hoping for more, but the second season destroyed the whole thing, it's that bad. I recommend not starting to watch it, because its an awful feeling to experience the second season. I don't want to spoiler, but the second season removes all of the alien-feel and replaces it with a bad war movie. Also the story pace becomes lightning speed, with story arcs you can't emotionally follow. It's in comparison go the first season utter rubbish. Don't do this to you.

It's not slow. It's escargot slow! Canal +, the French company behind it, obviously didn't have the budget of a Netflix or Amazon and tries to drag this extremely underwhelming story with silly clichéd characters (for starters white neurotic female more concerned about getting back at ex-husband than trying to see a point to all this extermination and nihilism). Non-sensical plot: Alien technology wipes out 99.99% of humanity in 1 second but sends Japanese looking dogbots to kill remnants.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]