The scariest alien invasion movie of recent years, no question, was Shyamalan’s Signs, which was almost entirely about omens, shadows and bumps in the night. And here comes Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (Paramount/DreamWorks, 6.29.05), his third movie about aliens visiting earth, and the first thing I get from the new teaser is obviousness and deja vu. I’m speaking of those middle-American families standing in their nightgowns and bathrobes on a small-town neighborhood street at night, looking with concern at those flashing sky lights in the clouds on the far horizon. I thought right away of those flashing sky lights in the clouds above Melinda Dillon’s home in the early stages of Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
