Continuity mistake: When Ray finally arrives at his ex in-laws' house, in the shot from behind Mary Ann, Ray passes the two cars on his right and is near the corner, but a few shots later, when Ray puts Rachel down, he is standing beside the first car, back up the street. (01:46:55)
Continuity mistake: When Rachel runs to her mom, in Boston, in the side shot of Mary Ann she's already gone down the stairs and crossed the sidewalk towards her daughter, yet in the next shot it's Rachel who crosses the sidewalk towards her mom, who is still up at the center of the stairs. (01:47:05)
Continuity mistake: In Boston, when Mary Ann lifts Rachel, she holds her daughter then turns to face Ray and says, "Thank you." Behind them, up the stairs, the left front door is already wide open, yet in the next shot both doors are closed until her parents dramatically open them. (01:47:30)
Continuity mistake: In the end of the movie before his son runs to him Tom Cruise is standing in the sunlight. In the next shot there is no direct sunlight. (01:48:00)
Visible crew/equipment: In the scene when Ray is fleeing Mary Ann's destroyed home in the van. Right before he says "Robbie, get in." You can see a cameraman in the reflection of the van, right before it stops.
Continuity mistake: When Ray is outside at the beginning of the movie during the lightning storm, he says to himself that the wind is moving in the direction of the storm. Yet when he calls to Rachel to come outside and take a look, her hair is blowing away from her face, in the opposite direction it should be blowing.
Revealing mistake: When the tripod is tipping the ferry over, people fall over the rail and cars slide toward it. You can see the cars stop short of the rail so they don't smash into stuntmen, even though they are jammed against the rail in the next shot.
Revealing mistake: At one point when Cruise is driving through the county in the van, you can see that the van is actually in "Park." You can notice this because the column mounted transmission lever is all the way up.
Revealing mistake: After the ferry scene, CGI clothes fall off from the sky, but manage to go through the branches of the trees, without becoming entangled in them, or without the branches affecting the falling path of the fabric.
Visible crew/equipment: After the plane has crashed Ray walks out of the house and towards the aircraft engine, as he walks behind the engine and before he comes from behind the engine, look at the right and to the rear of the engine, you will see a crew member move out of shot.
Other mistake: During the ferry scene, after Ray watches above at the aliens, there's an aerial view of the harbour and afterwards a shot of a crowd staring at the sky. Watch for a man on the right with a red hat taking a quick peek at the camera in front.
Factual error: The minivan that Ray drives is shown several times with its rear-most side window rolled all the way down. No such ability exists on any year/model of Chrysler-built minivan. They are either fixed (non-opening) or hinged at their forward edge to open like a 'flap' at the rear edge. The glass isn't broken, as it appears/reappears depending on the scene, and no such customization is possible as such a large window has no place to go down to due to the wheel well location directly below. The windows were obviously removed so the camera could move through the glass without having to use digital effects to go through the window, but in doing so, they created an obvious mistake.
Factual error: When Robbie runs up the hill to watch the army attacking the tripods, Rachel is left standing by a tree and a squadron of AH-1 gunships flies overhead to attack the aliens. However, these helicopters don't have any landing struts (certainly the one nearest the camera doesn't), but all models of the AH-1 had fixed struts.
Visible crew/equipment: When the first ship is beginning to emerge from the ground, we see a shot of two men on top of a swaying scissor lift, notice in the close-up there is nothing between them. When the shot cuts to a wide view, a camera covered by tarps appears between the two men.
Other mistake: In the scene where the aliens appear to throw the Bayonne Bridge off its pylons and the eighteen-wheeler crashes on top of the apartments, look closely on the far right. There is a red car, and right above it is a round black object above the hedge. As the scene continues, it starts to fade away into the red house behind it.
Other mistake: When Dakota Fanning and Tom Cruise are in the house being searched by the alien probe, they use a mirror to shield themselves. We can see a diverging beam of light coming off of the probe, and therefore we should be able to see a related beam coming off of the mirror, widening even further. No second beam is visible.
Continuity mistake: Just before the first alien tripod breaks free from the ground and cracks are appearing in the street, the front of the church cracks, and rocks away from its second half. In that shot, in the view from behind Ray, he places his right foot on the curb, while his left foot is on the road. In the next shot facing Ray, both his feet are on the curb.
Audio problem: When Tom Cruise gets back to his house after the first encounter with a machine, Robbie's says "What happened?" but nothing is heard, then he says it again and is heard the second time.
Factual error: As the Hudson-Athens ferry capsizes, Tom Cruise and his two children are almost crushed as a car slides off the ferry and quickly sinks, going straight to the bottom. We see that this sedan-style car has people in it, and that the windows are closed, so the passenger compartment has not yet flooded. It is still full of air. A sedan full of air would not quickly sink. It would briefly float on the surface, then slowly submerge as the passenger compartment floods.
Visible crew/equipment: When Tom Cruise comes back in off the street covered in ash, he slumps down by the refrigerator and very quickly the boom mic falls down into shot almost hitting Tom on the head.
Answer: Since the tripods tended to spray the red fluid shortly after pulling a human into themselves, it seems a good assumption that the red fluid is essentially blood. Given this, it seems likely that the "spore" of the vines is spread in the red fluid.
scwilliam