Body Snatchers and Other Invasions

My parents let me watch the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers perhaps when I was too young; I understood the movie just fine and that was the problem... the bleak ending with McCarthy on the highway trying to warn people scared and stuck with me.

Then came the Donald Sutherland remake, still considered one of the all-time best remakes ever. This movie frightened me even more, as the ending is so much bleaker-- the aliens appear to win.

As one who has had trouble sleeping since a young lad, the fact that the aliens in these movies "got" and copied people while they slept was particularly telling.

Each of these movies was fairly successful for their times (50s and late 70s).

In 1993, a new vision of this classic story came to the screen. While many of the effects were pretty good, I remember it most for the few nude scenes showing me a young Gabrielle Anwar. This movie went with a more ambivalent ending, and you are not sure if the main characters attacks on the pods is the end of it, or if Marti's stepmother's comments foresee the pods spreading all across the world. The movie didn't even make a million dollars at the box office, and was not particularly well-received by the few critics who reviewed it (but it was not horribly reviewed, either).

I just finished watching the 2007 reimagining of the story starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. The general concept of the film was decent (spores instead of pods), but Kidman looked horrible and showed no spark or imagination in her portrayal of the main character. I found myself actually rooting against her. Craig, an actor I generally admire and like, was wooden throughout; his best scene came once he was a pod-person, as that called for a more wooden delivery.

They also chose to go with a happy ending; Kidman saves her son, who happens to be immune from the infection, and a vaccine against the spores is developed. The director tried to add some ambivalence into the story by showing that, while under the effects of the pods, the world signs peace treaties. Once everyone is cured, it is back to wars and tribulation. While I realize the original story by Jack Finney actually ended with the pods giving up on Earth and floating away, the precedent has already been set by the first two that having the pods "win" (or, at least, not be defeated/discovered/done away with) makes for a richer story and a more horrific, lasting movie. Some could argue that this was the first "twist" ending horror film, as most of the 50s horror flicks ending with the hero triumphing.

There was a good film here. The change of the pods to spores and the way in which the spores got to Earth was interesting. From there on, however, the movie started to lose its imagination.

The casting of Kidman was the first major mistake made. I haven't seen her truly "lead" a film yet; she's much better in an ensemble or with a strong male lead or two to play off (the closest she comes in my mind is her role in The Others, a far superior classic horror/ghost story).

Secondly, having her son be the cure changed it from a horror movie into an action flick, as she raced to save her son (who was strangely absent from most of the meat of the film with little explanation as to why) and then raced to get him to the people who it just so happens can make an inoculation from his blood.

Third, having the "happy" (or non-ambivalent, non-horror) ending where everyone is cured and doesn't remember anything that happened to them while under the influences of the pods leaves a rather poor taste in the viewer's mouth. The whole concept is that the spores are rewriting human being's DNA -- a simple inoculation can rewrite it back? This is, at best, bad science and at worst a huge cop out by the writer/director. In the first three, when the pod is functional it somehow kills the host. But those films were going for horror, not action/suspense, so the deaths make more sense, I guess.

Fourth, many of the special effects and CGI just didn't look very good. Each time Kidman went to sleep for brief periods, we were accosted by too-glossy, fake-looking images of the spores inside her attacking and blowing up her blood cells (why they did this when it was expressly said earlier that the spores attacked and rewrote our DNA I don't completely understand). These scenes were so laughable as to completely take me out of the viewing experience. Add to this Kidman's lackluster performance during the "freak out because you nearly fell asleep" scenes that followed each of these effects, and this viewer was not impressed in the least.

This is a good story concept that has worked very well twice, okay once, and failed miserably another time. Hopefully someone who understands the horror of this idea will take the ball and run with it; I think today's technology can make for a truly horrific story of people being replaced, the fear of going to sleep (when human beings are at their most vulnerable to begin with), and the horror of finding out you are one of the last "real" people left on the planet.