Maintained a great buildup of suspense initially, but as the characters failed to progress beyond moronic, conventionally moralizing, two-dimensional caricatures (with the partial exception of George), and the conspiracy laden attack scenario is increasingly revealed (the allegory of a divided America), it became clear they wouldn't be able to stick the landing.
A plethora of ideas were tossed about, hidden symbols/Easter eggs and contrived character actions/plot points used to manufacture thin analogies while maintaining the building suspense, but it failed to coalesce into anything beyond a slop of tedious, half-baked metaphors by the, rather weak, ending of the film. Elements felt casually inserted (the animals for example) possibly because the writers thought they were interesting or cool, and vaguely symbolic, but with little narrative coherence, realism or depth beyond.
Much of this would be far less of an issue if other elements of the film were better. The cast was talented but little of the acting stood out, possibly because the characters rarely felt real or truly alive beyond flat stereotypes. Their actions often felt extreme and contrived, more so caricatures serving to re-emphasize the same assortment of shallow metaphors on technological reliance, media obsession, escapism, division, order vs. Chaos, but without the requisite level of realism to balance them out. Maybe this was even intentional, and they were meant to serve more so as extreme representations of these concepts as opposed to wholly realistic individuals. The bland, extremely surface level moralizing enhanced this sense of artificiality. Discussion and moral quandaries rarely progressed beyond simplistic and stereotypical. Perhaps this was also intentional.
