I most recently re-read The War of the Worlds before seeing the Spielberg movie. I liked the film okay, but I'll give it this over the George Pal production: Wells's classic isn't exactly science fiction, it's really existentialist horror. I don't think it would go too far to say it's a fox hunt from the point of view of the fox. Almost literally. I think Spielberg captures this in the way he depicted some patterns of the Martians' behavior (okay, in his film it may not have been Martians) while at the same time not drawing attention to it. All the same, although both films have their "horrifying" moments, they aren't as horrifying as the original novel. H.G. Wells relies on the science that teaches us the vastness of the world around us, and creates a fiction to show what a worst-case scenario that could be. The result is fear of the threats of which we can not now conceive.