Atempleh

If you read the gripping and gasp-producing novel Radium Girls by Kate Moore, you will not like this movie. I'm really annoyed I used some credits on Amazon to rent this, but I just finished the book and was so excited to see it in action on the screen. The basic story line and a few of the details (such as blaming syphilis, and the eventual corporate cover-up and unsympathetic judges) are true, otherwise they changed most of the names and created thin characters that do not fully do justice to the lives of the real women written about factually in the Moore book. It's a shame - this could have been so good! But it's choppy and much contrived. The part about Bessie joining the Communist party isn't bad because it's woke, it's ridiculous because there was no evidence of any of the girls doing this historically (and what's with the Egyptian intrigue???). Many of the girls were conservative, Catholic, and relied on their faith, prayers, and sympathetic lawyers and doctors. I gave two stars because if this was a stand alone movie and I hadn't read the real story, I could say the movie was creative, indicative of the time period, and I enjoyed the acting and historical movie clips interspersed throughout. But as an accurate depiction of what really happened, it falls WAY short of that. Esp the part that is repeated several times in the book about the girls actually glowing, their clothes glowed and even their bodies gave off an angelic halo in the dark. How cool would that have been in the movie!

I'm not someone who has a favorite genre, but rather someone who will enjoy any show as long as it has great characters and solid writing. This contains neither. I'd like to comment on the character arcs in Invasion, if only to tell you there aren't any. I've made it to the second to last episode of season 1 and, try as I might, I just can't seem to find anything likeable or redeeming about the characters. Forget about the lack of any real sci-fi excitement, the dialogue is disjointed and downright frustrating, as if it has been entirely composed by AI. And other than a few scenes containing daylight, most of the scenes are unnecessarily dark. It's just bad.

If you like an interesting sci-fi story, great acting and Jurassic Park style adventure, stop reading the negative reviews and watch this - it didn't disappoint at all. Action from start to finish, lots of tension and perfect jump scares. Adam Driver and Ariana Greenblatt develop an endearing partnership and anyone who has a child will choke up at certain parts throughout the movie. Both my husband and I loved it and will probably watch it again when our kids come home from college in a few weeks.