I was shocked at the lack of acting ability. Seriously, it's as if the director just said to heck with it all and crap out this fantastic hot steaming turd ball. So many times I found myself asking "What? Seriously?". I believe they just gave up on common sense and science throughout the movies. Yeah, everything you read about this movie as far as the reviews go on IMDb were all totally correct even the ridiculous claims are true. My biggest annoyance was the soundtrack. It was repetitive and literally sounded like you were stuck on the loading screen of a zombie game. Most of the time the music was inappropriately timed and by that I mean that it literally played the same gloomy death music the entire film. Some of the actors could stand to learn basic acting knowledge. I felt like they must have been running low on film or their standards were so low that everything seemed like it was on a 1 take, no repeats style filming. You can predict the entire movie plot as long as you aren't a 4 year old or drunk and high enough that you can't process simple plot lines. The ending was an absolute joke only because it made sense in a way. The survivors accomplished absolutely nothing other than to become reunited and then back to a "Pinky and The Brain" style motto. If you are being attacked by a martian civilization capable of interstellar space travel faster than light, why would you think taking out 1 Mother ship would solve anything. In fact this would most likely just get the real attack force to show up.In summary/TL;DR:This movie needed to be an hour shorter and they desperately needed to not use repeated combat scenes in CGI as a substitute for actual combat. The battle scenes really made you feel like you were watching an old time style cartoon full of repeated scene backgrounds and highly pitched fake screams looped and used several times again and again. Thanks to this movie I've lost not only precious irreplaceable time but I've lost all respect for any of the actors in this movie. Especially the main protagonist.

I was not expecting a lot but I was pulled into this one. It was fascinating to watch C Thomas Howell and his directing is very good also. I haven't seen the first War of the Worlds with Howell but it didn't really give me any problems keeping up with the story. Is it just me or does Howell look like a skinny version of Mel Gibson now? But I digress.I thought the special effects were actually quite good for a low budget flick. The Martian ships were nicely portrayed although they weren't really all that scary. Chris Reid didn't add a lot to the picture although it was sort of cool seeing him again. He did have some funny expressions here and there. It would have probably been better to give Howell a sympathetic female hottie sidekick but hey..?I thought the story was very well written, fairly complex and original yet still easy to figure out. They definitely got the best out of their budget and it really is a good picture in my honest opinion. No, its not one of those two hundred million dollar computerized action flicks made for video game addicts but I liked it a lot. I like B movies from all eras. They just seem more organic and rough around the edges which makes them edgier and more willing to take chances. War of the Worlds 2, the Next Wave is one of the better ones from this era. Give it a shot, you might find yourself digging it too!

Once you've accepted that it's one of the worst films you've ever seen, it's interesting to dissect exactly what is so bad about it. I could imagine this being shown in film school as an example of: Terrible acting across the board. Yes, even C. Thomas Howell who looks like death warmed over. But especially the girl with the accent that kept changing between southern, ? European, ? something else. Some of the worst editing I've ever seen: Lots of dead spots. Writing: Drawn-out, unoriginal plot with random unexplained turns, dead ends. At one point, a scene was almost identical to an earlier scene and for a couple minutes I wondered whether there was a glitch in the programming. (I saw it on SyFy with commercials). Special effects ranging from "meh" to bizarre and ridiculously laughable. Watching it all the way through makes you appreciate all the things that go into a good film and make it look effortless when actually there is a lot of good writing, directing, acting, editing, and cinematography that go into that "effortless" look. So I gave it a 2 instead of a 1 only because it may be of use to film students learning how NOT to make a film.

I am stuck for words as to how bad this movie is. The actors could teach trees to be wooden, plot had more holes than swiss cheese and 'Victoria's' accent!?!?! I can't believe she has even been to America the way speaks.I quite enjoy a good B movie, however, this was supposed to be a high gloss Sci Fi as the irony was missing, the casting agent, directors and production should perform ritual suicide for letting this get finished with their names attached.It staggers belief to think that while filming this movie, anyone could have been happy with the day's work.