After years of assuring us that aliens were a cuddly, friendly lot who just want to pop down to Earth to expand our minds, Spielberg's changing his story.

His new version of HG Wells' classic novel leaves Close Encounters and ET as dim and distant memories. These aliens have just one purpose: slaughter.

But when the end of the world is presented as magnificently as this, who cares about deeper motives? Wells' novel concentrated on Victorian London, but here Spielberg shifts the setting to modern-day New York. There he focuses on a single family caught in the midst of global panic.

You have to feel for Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise). A cocky, immature dockworker, he just wants to spend the weekend bonding with his estranged kids. But when a series of freak electrical storms hit Earth, his plans change. It seems the lightning is a wake up call for an army of unstoppable machines buried deep below the surface. When these devastating tripods rise, all Ray and his kids can do is run for their lives.

It's been a while since Spielberg made a must-see film, but this qualifies. It's a true rollercoaster ride, hurtling from one unbearably tense, often scary, sequence to the next. Yet the quieter scenes are just as involving. With Ray getting a crash course in responsible parenting as the world burns around him, Spielberg brings an unlikely emotional subtlety to the film.

Cruise is on great form, cannily playing on that trademark cocky grin. As Ray struggles to keep a nervous breakdown at bay, the smile is wiped from his face, replaced by a grim determination to save his family. And as daughter Rachel, Dakota Fanning is perfect. With every scene traumatising her further, it's often uncomfortable to even watch the poor kid.

This is no Independence Day-style fun invasion, though. Instead the emphasis is on war and suffering, and the whole film is informed by modern events and concerns. Many scenes echo September 11 and resemble the TV footage of war torn locations that's regularly broadcast into our homes. Spielberg turns the US into a refugee nation, filling the screen with powerful, disturbing imagery of panic-stricken crowds and terrifying confusion.

Despite this dark tone the film is never less than brilliantly entertaining. Whether it's all-out destruction, frenzied action scenes or quiet panic, Spielberg pulls out all the cinematic stops. The only slight niggle is that the ending, though original and ingenious in 1895, seems slightly anticlimactic in the age of the summer blockbuster. War Of The Worlds is a triumph in every way, and showcases a director at the very top of his game. It proves once and for all that, whether they're affable little gnomes or terrifying genocidal maniacs, nobody does ETs better than Spielberg.