Thanks must go to those earlier reviewers who mentioned being pleasantly surprised. They convinced me to give this tidy little film the 15-minute test. It drew me and kept me in, to the point that I went back and re-watched those first 15 after the final credits, to spot any subtleties I'd missed by not knowing the characters then.A few elements that will put off any viewers looking for a fun night of watching aliens take over the world:a long wait for the aliens to be seen, and then they're not exotic, quite low-brow in fact. - complex shifting back and forth in time between two couples' pasts and present - sparse dialogue that plays thematically with the title's meaning - the emotional tone of all the characters is disturbingly realistic rather than pumped up for quick thrills.Definitely not a waste of the time spent watching.

This was a movie I went into completely blind, kind of expecting to think it to be not worth my time. It turned out better than I expected! Yes, the jumping back and forth in time was distracting, but not difficult to follow if you were paying attention. The special effects are about what you'd expect from a made-for-TV movie, if not a little better. The setting was unexpected and refreshing. Certainly not the best movie out there, but not the worst, either. I'd recommend it.

I view most films as having potential. The problem is that most don't live up to that potential. Either the story is underdeveloped, or it's an idea we've seen a million times over (in this case, surviving an alien invasion), or the characters are underdeveloped, or the plot just isn't strung together very well, or it's a combination of the above problems. Here it seems to be all of the above. And one of the biggest flaws it has is the use of flashbacks. To quote Wikipedia: "A flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point in the story. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story's primary sequence of events to fill in crucial backstory. In the opposite direction, a flashforward (or prolepsis) reveals events that will occur in the future.[3] Both flashback and flashforward are used to cohere a story, develop a character, or add structure to the narrative. In literature, internal analepsis is a flashback to an earlier point in the narrative; external analepsis is a flashback to a time before the narrative started." Here, the scenes and points of history in the movie just randomly jump all over the place with no apparent connection or reason. The story, as summarized a dozen times, is about David, a workaholic who tries to get from a business trip in Denver back to his nearly-estranged (and cheating but who can blame her) wife. He is at first completely clueless about the alien invasion, and everyone he meets at first is cryptic about it ("THEY" poisoned the water, "THEY" invaded my property and I'm gonna empty the gun on them). The scenes are disproportionately out of order, jumping between scenes with him alone, scenes with his wife, scenes with him and his wife, scenes with him trying to help victims, scenes running away from or into aliens, etc. At one point it jumps back and forth between David rescuing a woman and David rescuing a man, WITH NO APPARENT REASON. The flashbacks, if that's what you want to call them, are not linked in any logical way. They could have strung the story out in a much more linear way (Couple having problems, David leaving for Denver, wife cheating, David slowly realizing the invasion, David tries to get home, David helps man infected by water, David helps crowd and only makes it out with woman, David finds his way home and runs into his wife just before....you know). And it would have worked FOR the film. Again, overused story plot, but it would have made so much more sense for the viewer. I get that maybe the producers wanted to try something new, maybe original story angles. And that could have been great, theoretically. Instead, they just caused the plot to jump everywhere, adding more confusion than necessary--confusion that could have gotten cleared up in a much better way, but nothing comes out of it. Instead he makes it back by pure dumb luck only to accidentally run into his wife by pure dumb luck, and be the last guy alive in the end. The whole movie could be one linear scene, with maybe one or two flashbacks to spice things up a bit, and the whole thing could be about David and his wife trying to reconcile over the phone while he tries to make it home alive. But no, we get this jumbled up mess that barely makes it to the end. Better luck next time.

OK, I get it. When you have the desire to write and make a movie but don't have the Hollywood connections or greenbacks to make it an A-level movie, you do the best you can and you surprise everyone with a great B- movie. This wasn't the case. This was a complete dog turd. Waaaay too much time spent flashing back, flashing forward, flashing sideways. There was so much flashing I had a seizure! I would sue the filmmakers, but I mean, seriously, there is no way in hell this movie turned a profit. Even with the writers, producers, and actors forcing their family members to go to the theater to see it. How about a couple of flashbacks and then keep the rest of the story line linear? Huh? How about that? The lead chump was such a moron I wanted to beat him over the head with that sledgehammer he used to whack that one alien. If breathing weren't involuntary, that moron would have asphyxiated a long time ago. Does this moron not understand the rule about picking up bizarre weirdos on the side of the highway in the middle of the night? I really had to laugh at that. Then, he does it again with that chick in the middle of the road. Too bad that farmer Brown with his straw hat wasn't a better shot with his gun. He would have done all of us a favor. Now, I gotta admit, his wife was a cutie- patootie, but ultimately just another empty-headed bimbo. And once again here's a chance where the director could have earned at least a little thumbs up had he given the audience a nice gratuitous booty shot of her when she was in the shower. But he didn't. Blown opportunity! And what was the deal with all the airplanes falling out of the sky? How about explain that a bit? And then the ending. Holy crap!!! I wanted to kick in my television screen. If anybody can forward me the address of the writer or director of this embarrassment, please do, I'll find him and waterboard him to within inches of his life. This movie didn't know what the hell it wanted to be so, as is readily apparent, the writers and producers simply ripped off Close Encounters, Signs, The X-Files, War of the Worlds, and Battle Los Angeles and made an awful hodge-podge, hot mess, puke-o-rama of a "movie". But this movie? Jeez, this movie makes some of those Syfy channel "Asylum" movies look like Oscar gold. For the love of God, don't waste your time watching this!