Set months following a devastating World War III, the film posits a world in which most of the Northern Hemisphere has been contaminated with radiation poisoning and people are moving down to Australia in order to escape the slow-moving but ever encroaching radiation dust. Leave it to Stanley Kramer then-director of such issue-heavy projects like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and Inherit the Wind-to deliver a moving ensemble drama about a group of characters in denial about their eventual destruction. Given the content restrictions enforced on films in the pre-MPAA age, you’d think it would be next to impossible to release a film containing the kind of visceral impact as a more modern production. While such a heavy-handed approach certainly bogs the story down in parts, the film is worth seeing for Rogers’ fantastic performance alone as well as the sheer bravery of story’s final 15 minutes. It’s not hard to see why thanks to its ham-fisted diatribe against traditional religious views of God. Made on a miniscule budget, the film did little business during its initial run, despite ringing endorsements from the likes of Roger Ebert. As the signs of the Rapture begin appearing, however, Sharon also begins to doubt her devotion to God and his “cruel” ways. She eventually even marries and has a daughter. The group warns that the biblical Rapture is near and Sharon takes the news to heart, vowing to give her life to God and live a purer lifestyle. Mimi Rogers plays Sharon, a Los Angeles hedonist who ends up falling in with a religious sect obsessed with the End of Times. Yes, the film kind of falls apart in the final reel, but by that point it’s earned more than enough goodwill to balance out the weaker areas. Moreover, by sticking closer to the book’s original premise, which involved a man’s attempt to locate his wife in the ensuing chaos, Spielberg creates a disaster film that feels much more intimate and personal than the ‘50s version. When the Tom Cruise character, having narrowly escaped the initial alien attack, looks into the mirror and realizes he’s covered in the ashes of disintegrated civilians, it’s next to impossible not to summon up the image of debris-covered New Yorkers wandering around the aftermath of the Trade Center attack. The power of Spielberg’s 2005 version is how he repurposes the original’s pervading Cold War paranoia in favor of incorporating elements of post-9/11 trauma. And who better to do so than Steven Spielberg? In other words, unlike certain other properties, a remake was not out of the question. Today, the film stands as an essential, if somewhat dated, milestone in the evolution of special effects. Wells’ classic novel remains one of the most notable science fiction films of the 1950s. Director Bryon Haskin’s 1953 adaptation of H.G.
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