Aliens attacked Earth, exterminating humans in a matter of days. However, they were unable to resist the microscopic organisms that wiped them out. At the beginning of the story, the narrator tells us that humans have been the object of scrutiny by more evolved creatures for many years, without any idea. These creatures, devoid of all compassion, have persistently plotted against us.
A guy named Ray Ferrier leaves work in the middle of the day and rushes home. However, he is still late to meet his ex-wife and her new husband. The wife is distrustful of Ray, and Ray himself is annoyed that her new husband is more successful. The wife brings Ray the kids for the weekend, but they are not particularly happy to meet him.
The family has no idea yet how the impending disaster will change their relationship. Meanwhile, Ray’s pregnant ex-wife is not happy about the mess in the kitchen, but still leaves the children behind and informs them that she will go with her husband to Boston to visit her parents.
Meanwhile, the children learn from the news that an unusual electromagnetic phenomenon has occurred in Ukraine and there is no power across the country. Ray pulls the kids away from the TV and calls them out to the yard to play baseball.
His teenage son Robbie reluctantly pitches his father and addresses him only by his first name. The conversation is not pretty: Eventually, he gets angry and walks away into the house.
Ray’s ten-year-old daughter named Rachel tries to be supportive of her father, but he is annoyed and doesn’t want to communicate. Instead, he falls asleep and the children are forced to order their own food because there is nothing in Ray’s refrigerator.
In the morning, Rachel keeps trying to have a normal conversation with her dad, but he acts like a disgruntled teenager. And Robbie goes off somewhere in Ray’s car without asking. The man immediately runs outside to find his son and notices a crowd of people taking pictures of something behind him. Ray turns around and sees a huge thundercloud.
No one has ever seen one like it before. The man runs to the backyard to get a better look at the anomaly and calls Rachel to him. For a moment, everything calms down. But suddenly lightning strikes from the cloud.
The girl is frightened and wants to go inside, but Ray is only amused. The lightning continues to strike harder and harder not far from their house. That’s when Ray gets uncomfortable, too. They run into the house and hide under the table.
The man claims that lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice, but this one has struck the same place 26 times. When everything subsides, the frightened Ray comes to his senses, but he cannot calm his daughter. The power is out throughout the house. The cell phone doesn’t work either.
Ray runs outside and discovers that all the cars are out of power. He finds Robbie and tells him to go home to his sister, and he goes to the spot where the lightning struck. On the way, Ray notices a friend of his helping to change the battery in someone’s car. A crowd of people flocks to the scene.
Some think solar flares are to blame. But they’re wrong. Police officers try to move people away from the hole in the asphalt. Suddenly, there is a rumble from underground and the asphalt begins to crack.
There is an earthquake that collapses some of the buildings. A large chunk of the earth rises and immediately subsides. People run away in a panic. Suddenly, giant metal tentacles emerge from the ground, followed by a robot that rises with a wild roar.
It is much larger than the tallest building in the city. People scatter in panic and stare at the horror from afar. The robot makes soul-crushing noises: The robot moves on three huge legs and points laser weapons at the crowd. The extermination begins.
All that is left of the victims are clothes and ashes. Like the others, Ray tries to flee. The terrifying beams pass right beside him. Everything explodes behind the man, and the huge monster continues to walk through the city.
Ray miraculously manages to slip away and return home. In shock, he sits down on the kitchen floor and is unable to explain anything to the terrified children. The man is covered in white dust. But it’s not just dust, it’s human ashes.
Ray washes up in horror and regains the strength to speak. Without further ado, he asks the children to pack quickly. They bombard him with questions, but there’s no time for that. Ray grabs his gun and leads the confused children down the street.
There are crowds of people running around chaotically. The hero leads the children to someone else’s car, which has just had its battery changed. The family gets in. Ray’s friend runs up to them and doesn’t understand why the man wants to steal someone else’s car.
Ray tries to talk him into going with them: As they argue, the apocalypse ensues around them. Eventually, the family leaves, and Ray’s friend pays the price for his indecision. Ray drives fast down the highway, but the children still don’t understand what’s going on. The terror makes Rachel hysterical, and her father fails to calm her down.
Robbie, on the other hand, quickly finds soothing words, takes her by the hand and the girl comes to her senses. Ray explains to the children as best he can where the scary robot came from.
It seems to have come from somewhere else. Ray assumes that the robot was buried in the ground a long time ago and that whatever is controlling it descended to it with the thunderstorm.
Either way, they have to get out of town as soon as possible. It looks like their stolen car is the only one on the road. The man brings the children to their mother’s house, but there is no one there. The couple has already left for Boston.
Ray decides to spend the night at the house and then drive to Boston in the morning to meet the children’s mother. He tries to get the children fed, but they are cranky, and the man loses his temper.
He wants to give the children to his ex-wife as soon as possible and take the responsibility off his hands. In the meantime, the family goes down to the basement for the night in order to be safer.
In the middle of the night, lightning strikes again, and the whole house begins to shake. The family gets really scared. They run even deeper into the basement and miraculously escape the huge explosion. All night long, everything outside rumbles and there is something frightening going on.
In the morning, Ray wanders around the broken house. It turns out that an airplane fell on their house and almost the entire street was demolished. Two war correspondents are already scouting the scene. They call the robots tripods.
It turns out that there are a lot of these machines now. But the worst thing is that the tripods are surrounded by a protective field, and it is impossible to destroy them. The reporter shows Ray a slow-motion video of a capsule going underground with lightning. Their conversation is interrupted by the approaching sound of a tripod, and the reporters leave.
Ray returns to the children in the basement. He begs Rachel not to look around when they leave the house. The girl obeys. But Robbie sees the surrounding devastation and is horrified.
However, the family heads out on the road. Soon, the children are asked to use the bathroom. Ray stops in the middle of the road and asks them not to go too far. After all, there is another danger – their car could be stolen by other people who are also frightened.
But Rachel is embarrassed and runs to a distant landing by the river. People float past her downstream. Until recently, they were alive. The girl is terrified, but Ray finds her in time and carries her back to her car.
Meanwhile, a military convoy is driving down the highway toward the epicenter of the disaster. Robbie gets heroic, leaps to the side of the road and wants to ride with the soldiers to fight the monsters. Ray is vehemently opposed to this, to which his son responds with a tantrum. Robbie thinks his father is a wimp, incapable of doing anything tough.
But Ray is only trying to keep his children safe and get them to safety. After all, he actually loves them unconditionally, he just hasn’t adjusted to the role of a father. But Robbie is convinced that Ray just wants to get rid of them. Soon his father asks the boy to get behind the wheel instead of him because he hasn’t slept at all.
Robbie is a little pleased by the trust he has in him. By nightfall, the family arrives in a big city. There are people walking the streets and looking uneasily at the car. Robbie and Ray swap places again without slowing down.
The angry crowd attacks the car. Everyone wants to get hold of it and get away from the monsters as soon as possible. Ray doesn’t stop until a woman with a baby gets in his way. Swerving sharply to the side, he crashes into a pole.
The crowd swarms on them and smashes the windows. They pull Robbie and Ray out and start beating them up. Ray fights back and fires his gun into the air to get his son released. But then another man shows up with a gun, demanding the car.
Ray throws the gun away and asks permission just to get the frightened Rachel out of the car. The family hides in a coffee shop. Rey can’t cope and cries, almost losing hope. Later, the family continues on foot amidst a huge crowd.
People share rumours that the monsters have awakened all over the Earth and are destroying all life. Everyone approaches the ferry to get across the river to the other side. So far, the place is quiet. But suddenly a tripod appears nearby with a frantic roar.
The whole crowd immediately rushes to the ferry, as it is the only way to escape. But the soldiers block the way to stop the people from sinking the ferry. Ray and his children bypass the military and the ferry sails. Thousands of destitute people have left ashore.
Robbie rushes to the barrier and tries to get at least one person inside. Ray looks at his son with pride. But all this is useless. Another tripod emerges from under the water and overturns the ferry.
All passengers fall into the water. The monsters no longer use lasers, but rather their tentacles to pull people toward their “head”. Ray and the children miraculously manage to survive and swim to the opposite shore. The monsters get closer and closer, so the family spends the night on the road.
By morning they reach a hill beyond which there is a fierce battle between the military and the tripods. There are APCs riding everywhere, explosions going off and planes flying. However, the military can’t break through the robots’ defences that way. Robbie watches as if mesmerized and rushes into the thick of the action.
Ray and Rachel run after him, begging him to return. Eventually, the father leaves the girl by the tree and asks her not to move, while he runs after Robbie himself. He rolls his son to the ground and pleads wholeheartedly to stay with him and his sister. Meanwhile, Rachel is found near the tree by a compassionate couple and is dragged away by force.
The girl resists and screams that she has to wait for her daddy. Ray hears her screams and realizes that he needs to get back to Rachel as soon as possible. But there is no way Robbie gives in to his pleas. The boy has chosen his own path and wants to fight the monsters.
Ray is terribly confused because he has to choose between his children. With incredible pain, he lets go of Robbie, looking after him, and rushes to Rachel. He takes his daughter away from the strangers and looks again in the direction Robbie went. There is an explosion there.
A tripod comes out of the fire and destroys everything in its path. Robbie is probably beyond saving. Distraught with grief, Ray decides to concentrate on saving the little Rachel. They run into some man’s basement holding a shotgun.
It’s much calmer here than it is outside. Ray pulls himself together and puts Rachel to bed. Wanting to reassure his daughter, he promises that Robbie will be waiting for them in Boston. However, he does not believe his own words.
Once an irresponsible father, Ray now can’t accept the loss of his son and tries to relate to his daughter. He tells Rachel sweet stories and sings a lullaby as best he can. Then Ray proceeds to chat with the owner of the house. His name is Harlan.
The monsters have taken his entire family, but the man isn’t about to give up and panic. Although he doesn’t really believe that people will be able to defeat the aliens. In spite of this, Harlan is going to fight to the end, and not run away. Ray, on the other hand, only wants to save his daughter.
Tripods go over the house, causing the ceiling to partially collapse. Harlan cheers up, grabs his gun and prepares to fight. He seems to be the same survivalist who has always waited for the end of the world and now rebukes Ray for not wanting to fight. Suddenly everything goes quiet.
A tripod tentacle with a surveyor’s eye on the end creeps into the basement through a crevice. It scours the cellar, looking for victims. The men run silently from place to place, hiding from it. Except that Harlan can’t calm down.
He picks up an axe and wants to chop up the tentacle. Ray signs to him not to do it, since it won’t do the monster much harm anyway, just make him angry. Rey finds a mirror in the basement and shields himself from the tentacle with it. The spy-eye stares at his reflection for a long time, and the humans have time to hide themselves.
After that, the tentacle crawls away. The people exhale in relief, unaware that things will only get worse. A rustling sound is heard as if someone is coming down the stairs to the basement. It is the creepy-looking aliens.
They rummage around the basement, touching everything and making themselves at home. Harlan is pissed off by this. He aims his shotgun at the intruders. Seeing this, Ray begins to fight him silently, lest he do something stupid and give them away.
Finally, the roar of the tripod sounds, and the aliens leave. The next day, the men look out the window and see the tripod grabbing a man in order to suck all the red liquid out of him. This liquid has already soaked into everything around him. This seems to be exactly what the aliens want from humans.
Fear causes Harlan to become insane: He yells out absurd things about secret tunnels in which an entire army will hide. The madman decided to dig one of these tunnels right in his basement. Ray urges Harlan to calm down, because the aliens may come to his shouts. But he doesn’t want to hear anything.
Then Ray decides to take a desperate step. He blindfolds Rachel and gently asks her to sing her favourite song. He locks himself in with Harlan and disposes of him. After a while, depressed and exhausted, he returns to his daughter.
Rachel realizes what her father has done for her and comforts him. But can Ray forgive himself? They manage to get some sleep, but the next day the spy eye reappears in the basement. It stares point-blank at Rachel, and the girl screams in horror. Ray jumps up, grabs the axe, and chops the tentacle, from which a red liquid gushes out.
In a panic, the girl runs upstairs. Finishing the job, Ray rushes after her. He runs through the barren hills in search of his daughter, but the tripod appears instead. Ray hides from it and hears his daughter’s scream nearby.
The monster grabs the child and put it in his cabin. Ray quickly retrieves a bunch of grenades from the APC and runs after the tripod screaming. He throws a grenade at the monster, but cannot penetrate the protective field. However, the tripod notices him and picks him up as well.
Ray ends up in a cage, where many panicked people are huddled. Rachel is there, too. The girl is rendered speechless by the shock. The monster releases a vile tentacle from its suction device and drags one man into it to drain the red liquid from him.
The monster uses it as fuel. It drops the tentacle back into the cage and wraps it around Ray’s leg. At the last moment, the man manages to grab a bunch of grenades with him. All of a sudden, Ray is caught by the arm of a military man from below.
The others join in and try to save the hero. They manage to pull Ray out. However, the guy has left the grenades in the suction device. The men brace themselves against the bottom of the cage.
There is a massive explosion inside the tripod. It shatters and falls to the ground. The terrified survivors scramble out into the open. Ray and Rachel walk to Boston.
Everything here, too, is covered in red vegetation, but it’s slowly withering away. Then they see a motionless tripod, which shut down on its own and collapsed on a house. The military didn’t knock the monster down, it broke on its own. The heroes have no idea what caused it yet.
The town is attacked by another monster. Suddenly Ray notices that birds land on the “head” of the tripod. So the defences are down. Ray shouts this to the military man.
He immediately commands him to turn the guns on the tripod. While the civilians are hiding in an underground tunnel, the military fires several projectiles at the monster. The shells hit the control room of the tripod. It falls to the ground with a terrifying crash.
A crowd gathers around the defeated monster. A wave of red human fluid gushes out of its tank. The alien’s arm emerges from the control room and lifelessly drops. Then his head appears.
It growls wearily but immediately goes permanently silent. Ray and Rachel walk to her grandparents’ house. Rachel’s mother opens the door. She cries tears of happiness and hugs her daughter as she runs up.
The woman looks at Ray with admiration and gratitude. But then someone else comes out of the house. It’s Robbie. He has managed to survive the terrible battle and make it to Boston.
Ray hugs the boy tightly and can’t believe his luck. His son has survived and calls him dad again. In the end, the narrator explains to us why the aliens were never able to enslave humans. The enemy was wiped out by the tiny creatures that humans are naturally immune to microbes.
What do you think, should Ray have fought or cared for his children? Let’s discuss this in the comments!
