The Invasion
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Movie Reviews of The Invasion
Movie Review: Past Reviews Snatched This Movie From Viewing
Summary: 4 Stars
For a long time I didn't watch this movie because the reviews said it is really, really bad. But it's really not bad at all. I give it four stars because I keep thinking how much better 'I Am Legend' story is.Movie Review: Not as bad as some critics said it was
Summary: 3 Stars
The Invasion did not get a very good critical reception and I wonder why that's so. After all, this is a sci-fi movie about bodies being snatched by aliens. If you count up all the positive things in 'The Invasion', that will balance out the bad. Therefore, this film ranks a passable "5".
Let's look at the good things first. 'The Invasion' starts off simply and effectively. A shuttle craft plummets to earth after some kind of malfunction. Pieces of the craft contain alien spores which can infect and ultimately take over peoples' DNA after they fall asleep. The spores start spreading after souvenir hunters start picking up pieces of the doomed craft (there's a great line about someone selling a piece of the wreckage on eBay).
Tension builds as we see how the transformation of ordinary people into zombies affects the protagonist, Carol Bennell (a psychiatrist played by Nicole Kidman). We see these transformations beginning with one of Carol's patients who claims she no longer recognizes her abusive husband as someone she really knows (instead of abusing her, he kills the family dog without emotion!). Then when Carol leaves the office, the camera pans out to reveal what has happened to the wider society--now the 'pod people' walk around with blank stares on their faces while the enforcers amongst their group grab 'normal' people and infect them against their will. In a sense, the pod people (or better yet, the spore people) are a metaphor for cult-like societies (such as North Korea) who brainwash their followers into slave-like submission.
Carol's ex-husband, Tucker, works for the Center for Disease Control and he's infected early by the alien invaders. He returns from Atlanta (where he's had no contact with his son for two years) and suddenly wants visitation rights from Carol who has no choice to now let her ex see her son. Tucker obviously wants to infect the son, Oliver, (winningly played by an extremely talented child actor, Jackson Bond) but it turns out he's immune due to having contracted chicken pox as a very young child (don't ask me to explain the science behind why he develops an immunity). The rest of the movie is taken up with Carol trying to save her son from Tucker's clutches and also trying to avoid falling asleep after Tucker infects her.
I think that Nicole Kidman signed on to make this movie precisely because one of the themes is that the maternal bond is elemental. Carol bonds with Oliver and the two actors have great chemistry together (despite this being a horror movie, many women will be drawn to it due to the mother/son chemistry). Daniel Craig (looking much better than how he appears in the James Bond movies) is effective as Ben Driscoll as a low-key scientist who's trying to help Carol escape the clutches of the aliens.
A group of supporting actors in a scene taking place at the Russian Embassy also gives 'The Invasion' a brief window of respectability. Driscoll's friends are a Czech couple who are friends with the Russian Ambassador, Yorish. He ironically argues with Carol that the Social Dawinism of his hot-headed Russian culture is far superior to the wishy-washy liberalism of the West (pointing out that she seeks to take the fire out of her patients by dulling them with psychotropic medication).
'The Invasion' falters in the first half due to the screenwriter's insistence on depicting Carol as being completely myopic. Despite the fact that she is a psychiatrist and would naturally be skeptical of some of her patients' claims, there are too many clues that would cause her to become aware of the alien invasion much sooner than how it occurs in the storyline. The writers could have solved this lack of plausibility by perhaps establishing early on that Carol is one of those professional people who is so completely devoted to science and so contemptuous of anything that might smack of the supernatural that it would blind her to what was actually going on around her.
The second half of 'The Invasion' becomes repetitious with too many chase scenes and the cliché of Driscoll, Carol's best friend, suddenly being taken over by the aliens at the film's climax. Jeffrey Wright is completely forgettable as Dr. Galeano, Driscoll's buddy who develops the vaccine that saves humanity. Finally, I didn't buy at all the news media's failure to uncover the alien invasion. Despite the horrific changes in the vast majority of the population, early on there had to be some uninfected people in the media who would have broadcast what was going on, not only on television but on the internet as well. Instead, the obvious changes are labeled as "flu-like symptoms".
I found 'The Invasion' to be mildly entertaining. Plotwise, it sort of ran out of ideas in the second half but technically the film was well-served by excellent editing and a moody and introspective soundtrack.
Movie Review: Yet another remake of a classic story.
Summary: 3 Stars
Every era seems to have a connection to the "Body Snatchers" as there have been about 4 films so far that are based on the classic tale and it has spawned numerous similarily themed films and silly rip-offs (Invasion of the Pod People).
The first version and arguably the best is Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) which dealt with McCarthism. The next take on the classic came in 1978 with Invasion of the Body Snatchers and has become my favorite version of the tale. It focused on our need to be emotional even when it makes no sense, hence, the appearance of Leonard Nimoy in the film who built a career playing Spock, part emotionless Vulcan and part human, on Star Trek. Then there came Body Snatchers in 1994 and although that was a rather forgettable version, it did have something to say about the "me" and "greed" era of the 1980's.
Now we have "The Invasion" in which Nicole Kidman takes on Leonard Nimoy's supporting role in the 1978 version and makes it the starring role. She is well-supported by the new James Bond, Daniel Craig (Casino Royale, and even the actor who plays the new Felix Liter in the same Bond film. In addition, there is Jeremy Northam (The Net) who has made a nice career playing heavies, and in a moment of inspirational casting there is Veronica Cartwright playing a patient of Kidman's.
Cartwright was terrific in Alien (the first one) and has been in more supporting roles in film and television than I can remember. But why is she so memorable for being in this film? She was in the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, and Leonard Nimoy. She is a consistently strong supporting actress and to see her return 30 years later in this remake is fun and it's nice that her role isn't some small cameo either.
The film itself is rather unremarkable even though it is enjoyable. I think it may end up being only a bit more remembered than the 1994 version of this tale only because of it's cast as the direction, effects, music, and photography are all rather pedestrian. In addition, many may recall this film for NOT having the infamous "pods" for which this tale is so well-known for. While this makes this take a bit unique, I think it's a flaw as it treats the invasion more as an infection and less than an interglatic fight to exist as we are and not as another being would have us be and that is ironically the focus of this film even though that isn't played up until near the end (as if it were an after-thought).
This tale continues to be haunting even with the lackadaisical approach here because this tale speaks to us in this era that seems to suggest that everyone not exactly like one group is wrong or bad. We have become in this era rather ethnocentric and this film lightly explores how if we were all alike there would be no more wars, distrust, hate and so forth, but for that kind of world we must give up our souls. In the end, this film attempts to redeem it's own pointlessness by throwing in the question of whether is it better to have wars over religion, status, wealth, etc. or have peace at the cost of not being who we are and our right to express that.
The film wastes the talents of all by only hinting on this theme rather than exploring it with more depth and sincerity as the previous versions explored their visions of paranoia, isolationism, and the deadening of emotions in an ever increasingly violent world. For this lack of seriousness and earnestness this film is all too much like the 1994 version which was more like this one in that it had a good cast and was appropriately chilling, but lacked significant punch and/or influence.
This film is mild popcorn fun and the whole family can see it, but don't expect it to hold up to the first two far superior versions of this timeless tale.
Movie Review: Nearly Deplotted, We Are Gatthered Here...
Summary: 3 Stars
This version of Jack Finney's book Invasion of the Body Snatchers had some promise, but ultimately missed the opportunity. Apparently the studio didn't like the cut director Oliver Hirschbiegel delivered. My suspicion is that the original film, which was completed in 2006, was probably more coherent. The Wachowski brothers were hired for massive rewriting and James McTeigue directed the new scenes. The result is a film that takes an unexpected turn for the worse.
What's new in this rendition is that the victims of the alien virus aren't replaced by duplicates. Instead, the virus just acts within their own bodies, changing them so that they act as one organism-- we're talking a slightly nicer version of the borg from Star Trek. The idea of a more benevolent invader would have been a fresh interesting take and was where this movie was headed before the hack job. It would have been more insidiously delightful to explore the cost benefit analysis of succumbing to the invasion. No more wars, cruelty, and poverty on one side, while the stripping of a lot of what makes us human on the other-- also the collective vs. the individual. This probably would have come closer to Don Siegel's communist cold war scare overtones in the original movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Instead the movie moves to more action sequences of fighting against a overtly hostile threat. This is where the original idea gets abandoned and the movie loses its way.
All of the actors put in decent performances here including an admirable job by Nicole Kidman in the lead role, Daniel Craig as her love interest (an excellent new James Bond by the way), a very good cameo from Veronica Cartwright (in the 1978 remake Body Snatchers), Jeremy Northam as the somewhat creepy ex-husband, and Jeffrey Wright as the scientist.
I think the studio should take the blame for dooming a film that had some potential. It's still an enjoyable watch and worth a rental, especially for alien invasion enthusiasts. I don't think I've ever seen a more equally distributed range of opinion by reviewers (from one to five stars). Where it all tallies out is about where I'd put it... 3 stars.
P.S. Although lesser known than Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Jack Finney wrote a couple of great books on time travel (From Time to Time and Time and Again) as well as several short stories. They go well beyond being just science fiction and are highly recommended.
Movie Review: snatched...again
Summary: 3 Stars
The Invasion is a slick, sophisticated take on the terrific tale of the pod people we have seen so many times before. Or at least that's what the movie tries to be. Fourteen years after Body Snatchers: the invasion continues, an under-appreciated nicely executed sci-fi thriller, we are now subjected to a new tale of a spore threat that spreads by way of a virus. This time, the nasty business of having to deal with the disposal of useless shells of humans after pod conversion, is completely unnecessary. The virus simply merges with human DNA and the alien consciousness takes control of the host body as they sleep. The spreading of the virus is accomplished through a mucous spit spray, the movie's main downfall as this type of transmission has been done countless times before in different sci fi vehicles. Since we miss out on the special effect heavy scenes of transformation that populate previous pod propulsion, There is plenty of time for suspense laden scenes filled with the dread and impending doom as the takeover of humanity seems unstoppable. Nicole Kidman and the boy playing her son are absolutely terrific and believable as they try to resist the onslaught. They outwit the zombie-esque populous at every turn in subtle and not so subtle ways. Now for the bad: Daniel Craig is horrendous as Kidman's love interest. He displays less humanity before conversion and more emotion afterward. A complete disparity when the rest of the cast largely compliments the decent (tough dumbed down)script. With the focal point of the movie being the quick takeover of humanity, the science equation suffers enormously as there is little sense of the slow building progress and understanding of the alien presence that we experienced in the previous pod adventures. Instead, we have quick explanations that only seem to be a way to provide a brief break from the suspenseful scenes. I enjoy these types of movies when they provide a plausible chain of events around the learning of how the alien pathology works and the steps we need to take to stop it. The Invasion fails here considerably, and therefore gets a lower rating because of it. There are several political allegories that seem forced rather than a subtle side benefit as in previous films as well, adding to discomfort. So, the moral is, if you want a decent thriller to get your heart racing, it's here in The Invasion, but if what you're really looking for is an intelligent sci fi vehicle that truly delivers the goods, it may be better for you to see the other Invasions of the pod people. 3 stars