Steven Spielberg’s 2005 version of War of The Worlds’ features his most underrated movie monster in the form of the Tripods. While Spielberg has technically never directed an out and out horror movie, he’s still behind some of the scariest scenes in cinema history. His first movie monster was the hulking truck from Duel, where the unseen driver torments a commuter in the Mojave desert. To make it explicit that the truck should be seen as a living creature, there are even sound effects of it roaring in the finale. Spielberg later helmed his breakthrough movie with Jaws and from the harrowing opening attack through to the cage sequence, it’s a masterclass in tension and suspense.
After a period producing classic genre movies like Poltergeist and Gremlins, his next big monster movie would be Jurassic Park. An adaptation of Michael Crichton’s novel, this 1993 blockbuster made icons out of the T-Rex and Velociraptors, with Spielberg again producing some nail-biting sequences. He later returned to the franchise with The Lost World: Jurassic Park in 1997, but outside of a couple of good setpieces, the sequel lacked the spark of the original.
In 2005 he went back to his blockbuster roots with War Of The Worlds, another adaptation of H.G. Wells’ acclaimed sci-fi novel. This version followed Tom Cruise as a father trying to keep his children safe as alien invaders start laying waste to the world. The movie again displayed Spielberg’s talent for staging a setpiece, though it’s not considered one of his best works. It also suffers from an abrupt and unsatisfying ending where the invaders are felled by exposure to the planet’s microbes; an ending Spielberg has since admitted is no good.
![War Of The Worlds’ Tripods Are Spielberg’s Most Underrated Movie Monsters](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/war-of-the-worlds-tripod-dakota-fanning.jpg)
The best thing about War Of The Worlds remains the alien Tripods themselves, which are relentless and clinical killing machines. The first setpiece where a Tripod emerges from beneath a church – which comes complete with a trademark Steven Spielberg shot of bystanders looking in awe – before attacking the crowd with a death ray is one of the movie’s most terrifying sequences. Like the truck in Duel, Spielberg does not attempt to humanize or give a face to the aliens, as the film is entirely from the POV of Ray and his children.
War Of The Worlds later reveals these machines capture humans alive and harvests them for their blood, and they seem borderline unstoppable until the finale. It’s this unknowable quality and commitment to wiping out humanity that makes them genuinely unnerving and while the movie itself is flawed, they’re Steven Spielberg’s most underrated movie monsters.