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Remake. Increasingly in vogue. Remakes upon remakes. Nowadays, finding a film that is not a remake is more challenging than those that are. This "The Day the Earth Stood Still" of 2008, directed by Scott Derrickson (also known for the gut-wrenching "The Exorcism of Emily Rose"), comes across as a poor imitation of one of the cornerstones of global science fiction, that "The Day the Earth Stood Still" from 1951 directed by Robert Wise.
Thus, Hollywood once again presents us with a remake, this time of a film born under the Cold War that knew how to change the perspective on the "alien" phenomenon. Now, however, our poor planet is increasingly in trouble because mankind is slowly destroying it. Hence, we are visited by an alien from an unspecified place in the universe named Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) who positions himself as a messenger, accusing humanity of causing the planet’s demise. He warns a scientist (the stunning Jennifer Connelly) that the time has come for humans to face extinction.
With a slow pace (at times, very slow), the film unfolds amid flat dialogues (born from an anonymous screenplay by David Scarpa) and a mother/son relationship that serves no purpose other than to fill cinematic spaces where nothing happens. Among the banalities present, the one concluding the work is utterly embarrassing. The episode that changes Klaatu's mind completely destroys the film's credibility.
Derrickson focuses heavily on special effects, a rarefied atmosphere, and muffled sounds. He partly succeeds, but all this does not manage to lift a banal and above all "commercial" film.
"The Day the Earth Stood Still" clearly loses the comparison with the original, which was made with limited graphical means. Here, on the contrary, despite 57 years of experimentation, computer graphics, and various stylistic evolutions, Scott Derrickson’s work fails to convey emotions, and little, very little, is salvaged.
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