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Rish's Reviews
From space, an alien bacteria arrives on earth, infecting people it comes in contact with and spreading among the populace. While the infected sleep, a transformation occurs, changing them into worry-free, emotionless conspirators, set on spreading the bacteria to everyone. A Washington psychiatrist (Nicole Kidman) discovers the conspiracy, and tries to get to the bottom of it, while keeping herself and young son out of harm's way.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a very unique movie for me. I love the original, and I love the remake even more. I guess that could be said about King Kong too, but I like IOTBS more than both versions of that.
Because I hate remakes, I was trepidatious about this one, but because I've seen so many versions or derivations or ripoffs (such as Invaders From Mars, The Puppet Masters, Body Snatchers '94, and The Faculty . . . I'll let you determine which category each goes in), I thought I'd give this a try.
The cast wasn't bad. Kidman was good, and lovely. Daniel Craig is a likable guy. Jeffrey Wright played a colleague of his (in the new Bond franchise, Wright is Felix Leiter), also likable.
But something about it just didn't work.
The director also made Downfall, which I really, really liked. Apparently, this was a very troubled production, and the film released in theatres was different from the first cut, with extensive reshoots and a second (and some say third) director brought in. If that is the case, I can assure you that the original vision of this film would've made a better, if not more successful, movie.
At one point, Daniel Craig's character says, "You can easily go a week without sleep." That shocked me, and comes close to ruining my most recent screenplay-in-progress.
There was a "You Stupid Bitch, You Deserve To Die" moment where Kidman warns her son not to let her fall asleep, then she starts nodding off, so she gets up and wanders around for a minute, then sits down alone a few aisles away from where her boy is dozing. Arrgh.
You know, I don't think this was the worst film of the summer (Horror or otherwise), but some people sure did. And I certainly had my problems with it.
A small one: I don't know why it bothered me, but the kid wears a mask with his Superman costume. Superman doesn't wear a mask. Every kid knows that.
A larger one: They say that no bond is stronger than that of a mother and her child--we've all heard the stories of mothers managing superhuman acts in the protection of their offspring-- so I wonder why this didn't resonate with me more. It really should've worked on the level of Aliens or Poltergeist, but it struck me as artificial here, the phony relationship of a performer and the actor playing her child. It's really hard to describe, and maybe I'm the only one who felt that way, but . . . hey, there it is.
A much larger one: The ending of the film was not earned. I hesitate to talk about it, because it gives a lot away to talk about the ending, but if you're going to be bold and say, "Let's give this one a ____ ending, where the characters who ___ end up ____." Dang, it's hard to express what I'm trying to say here. Anyway, you need to work hard to make an audience satisfied with that kind of ending, and I sure didn't think they did.
For some reason, the aliens were depicted as being . . . if not better, then less petty, and less warlike than us. As soon as the world is taken over, there is peace in the Middle East, people start getting along, and most of the world's problems begin to disappear. It would seem that humanity is just too flawed, too emotional, and too short-sighted for its own good. That should have made me think more, but it just made me sad. I know people are no damn good and . . .
Ah shoot, I guess I've got to spoil this one. Sorry.
I know people are no damn good, but this film seemed to take the opposite approach of the other two Invasions that I like (I seldom even consider the Gabrielle Anwar film). In those, humanity is a beautiful, noble, fragile thing and it is destroyed by something colder and more logical and more orderly, hence the tragedy. In this one, the aliens are logical, orderly, peaceful, and noble, and they are wiped out by flawed, warmongering, spiteful, disorganised, self-destructive, yet emotional humanity. A pyrrhic victory, I guess.
There was initially a great deal of reluctance to call this a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with the filmmakers going so far as to call it "The Visitors"/ "Visiting," before going to the shortened title it was released under. But that puzzles me. I mean, no one is ever going to confuse what the film is, with the character names and Veronica Cartwright and the source material the same, unless they're the types that wouldn't be familiar with the original(s) anyway.
So I don't get it. Is there some kind of shame in remaking a classic like Invas--
Well, yes, now that I think about it. There is.
I'd Recommend It To: To people who haven't seen the other versions, but just to show them how good the old ones are.
Posted: October 30, 2007

Total Skulls: 13

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?