By Kit Bowen
Story
What, no "giant sea pods" this time? Instead,
The Invasion skews the
Body Snatchers scenario by making the alien invasion a virus rather than plant life. Said virus, which comes to Earth via a mysterious crash of a space shuttle, is transmitted by some form of bodily fluid-to-bodily fluid connection. For example, throwing up into people's faces or coffee cups is a fun way to spread the disease. The end result, however, is the same: Once the infected person falls asleep, they undergo a transformation and wake up looking the same but are unfeeling and inhuman—and ready to organize. As the infection spreads and more and more people are altered, there are a few humans left, fighting for their lives, including psychiatrist Carol Bennell (
Nicole Kidman) and her doctor friend, Ben Driscoll (
Daniel Craig). Carol’s only hope is to stay awake long enough to find her young son, who may hold the key to stopping the devastating invasion. But we won’t tell you how. OK, it has something to do with an immunity, but that’s
all we are going to say.
Acting
Nicole Kidman has had a string of bad luck since winning that damn Oscar for
The Hours. One wonders if maybe the golden statuette might actually be a curse (
Cuba Gooding Jr., anyone?). Still, regardless of the movie--be it
Bewitched,
The Stepford Wives or
Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus--
Kidman manages to turn in a decent performance. The same goes for
The Invasion. Her mother bear act is quite believable, as she races to find her son (played with spunk by
Jackson Bond), while trying to stay awake and pretending to be cold and unemotional among the pod people--oh, excuse me, the
virally infected people. You root for her all the way.
Craig doesn’t have as much to do but still delivers when it counts. In a supporting role,
Jeremy Northam does a nice job as Carol’s ex-husband, a CDC doctor who is one of the first to get infected. As does the always good
Jeffrey Wright as a very clever genetic scientist. Even
Veronica Cartwright, one of the survivors in the 1978
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, makes a cameo as one of Carol’s patients who tells her, “My husband isn’t my husband!” Famous last words.
Direction
Body snatching must be a popular water-cooler topic at the movie studios. Starting with the 1956 sci-fi classic
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which
Kevin McCarthy barely escapes his small town with his life, running into highway traffic, screaming, “They're here already! You're next! You're next, You're next...” there have been at least two other versions, including the above-mentioned 1978 film and the 1993 film
Body Snatchers. To its credit,
The Invasion switches things up a bit, nixing the pods and making it more relevant to our current socio-political climate. It even begs the question: Could we be better off if we didn’t have emotions? But the movie is still mired by its derivativeness and too-pat ending—and it also apparently had problems getting off the shelf. Originally wrapped in early 2006, rumor has it the studio didn’t like German director
Oliver Hirschbiegel’s original cut and brought in
Matrix’s
Andy Wachowski and
Larry Wachowski for rewrites and
James McTeigue (
V for Vendetta) to direct the new scenes. Again to its credit,
The Invasion surprisingly feels cohesive, despite all the different influences. Let’s just say, whoever came up with the tense car chase in which Carol tries to throw off the pod people (it's just more effective calling them that) draped all over the car, kudos to them.