There is a blood-freezing moment in Orson Welles' (in)famous War of the Worlds radio broadcast when the reporter is detailing the distance of the invading aliens' poisonous gas from his position at the station. The speaker (not the scientist played by Welles) says, "a hundred yards away . . . It's -- it's . . . fifty feet!" Then a thud is heard, and for an excruciating twenty-five seconds there is no sound but a hum, that of the passing invaders, until a different broadcast comes in. The silence is pure terror. It is at this moment that the listeners' fates are sealed -- and no heroic music or speeches are there to accompany. I don't know if director Byron Haskin was taking notes, but fifteen years later, he adapted H.G. Wells' novel to a film which likewise succeeds in captivating its audience largely through expert use of silence.

The movie begins, as so many invasion films do, with what seems to be a meteor that has crashed to Earth. Little does anyone know that this is but the first arriving member of an entire army of invading Martians, until a group of three civilians sees a periscope-like object protrude from the top. In a somewhat goofy scene that establishes the aliens' mindset with no ambiguity, the three approach it, waving a white flag, and it responds by dispassionately vaporizing them. When the military, too, proves itself useless against their technology, there is nothing mankind can do to stop the invaders. The world literally crumbles around our main characters as they scramble, at first to find another solution, and eventually to simply find each other so as to spend their last moments with someone they love. It doesn't get more hopeless or dramatic than this.

Haskin gives the alien invaders a perfectly eerie presence by holding back, at first on their actions and later on their emotions. The first time we see anything of the aliens, it is the periscope silently looking around at its surroundings. We already know its intentions our bad (due to an explanatory voice-over introduction), but the characters do not. It simply watches those first three men approaching it. Eventually, it bursts out a sort of ray with absolutely no warning and an equal lack of effort, and they are gone.

When the aliens do begin the full-on assault, the terror remains because their actions are so cold. At no point do they make any attempt at communicating with us; they simply kill and move on. Also, the fact that they are almost always inside their spacecrafts means that we never see any sort of facial expression. We therefore can infer no sense of anger, fear, joy, or any other feeling. This absence of emotion makes their actions infinitely sinister. We are nothing to them but an insignificant hindrance, and the characters do not even get the justice of knowing what they are dying for. To understand an antagonist's intentions is to have a character study; to have no insight whatsoever into a killer's feelings is to be subjected to pure horror.

The final act is where the film goes from very good to great. The aliens are all over the planet, and in the city of the main characters, looting mobs have taken over the streets while everyone tries to escape. After rioters unknowingly take the equipment that was Earth's last possibility of fighting the aliens off, the main character finally gives up. During his last hours on Earth, with no hope of survival, he wanders the empty city looking for his loved one. His search becomes more and more hopeless. In the meantime, the aliens are moving through the city, slowly but efficiently destroying everything they see. The film spends a good bit of time on this moment, and the viewer fully feels the oncoming of doom. There is no music to dramatize the destruction; it speaks for itself as the literal crumbling of civilization. The penultimate scene takes place in a church where people are praying for divine intervention and delivery from fear, and otherwise spending their final moments with the ones they love in the place that has offered them comfort and guidance throughout their lives. The absence of any score at this point places the focus on the bleakness of their situation and avoids any Romanticizing of the conflict. Indeed, there is no conflict anymore; the aliens are having their way, and there's nothing that can be done. Their only hope is that God can save them Himself.

This is not an allegory about invading countries or ideals. Sure, the aliens could be viewed as communists (then) or terrorists (now), but there is no focus on character reaction that would cause us to consider the societal and personal effects of such an invasion. Instead, it is an appreciation of mankind's existence. It shows us, through our reaction to the events on screen, the sadness of watching life come to and end.

This is a great film because it successfully evokes a feeling of pure hopelessness and does so to an admirable end. At these moments, what can we do but realize and turn to the truly important things in life? Like in other apocalyptic films, civilization is dismantled so that we can look past the walls of society into the larger truths of life. Films like this are good for us because they cause us to reassess our understandings of the world without having to actually experience cataclysm. It contains one simple message that is so easily forgotten: Do not take life for granted.