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I don't think it's schmaltz to have a happy ending. Why have the daughter live? Was it schmaltz to not have her pulled into the liquifier and then sprayed all over the landscape? Was it only not Schmaltz because Tom Cruise saved her onscreen, but schmaltz if the son survived off?
Perhaps you're not aware how closely Spielberg's War of the Worlds echoed the George Pal version, but if both had a happy ending with all characters "miraculously" surviving, it's simply item 83 that the stories have in common. The fact that the stars of the George Pal version appear (as the grandparents) a moment before the happy ending is revealed simply serves to underscore this fact.
Of course, everyone's free to want a sad ending if they choose. It frankly would have made more sense for the Martians to have worked out some artificial immunity or defense to Earth microbes, but then the story wouldn't have been War of the Worlds either.
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