The Invasion

Oliver Hirschbiegel's The Invasion—the third remake of Don Siegel's 1956 classic adaptation of Jack Finney's novel Invasion of the Body Snatchers—is easily the worst of the lot, a misbegotten clone starring Nicole Kidman as a divorced Washington D.C. psychotherapist who dotes on her sweet little son. Unfortunately, her ex-husband is a CDC bigwig who's infected by a gooey alien spore that clung to a crashed space shuttle, and from him the plague spreads exponentially as victims spew the icky extraterrestrial bile onto others. The only way the unaffected can blend in with the folks who have been transformed (while they're asleep) into the proverbial pod people is to feign the unemotional, blank-eyed look of the contaminated. The situation quickly deteriorates, as most of the population succumbs to the pandemic, but our heroine struggles on, trying to rescue her son from her ex's clutches while staying awake herself. The Invasion tweaks the story's conventions in a few interesting ways, but ultimately degenerates into a pallid parent-and-child-fleeing-aliens scenario. Not recommended. [Note: DVD extras include a 19-minute “We've Been Snatched Before: Invasion in Media History” featurette, three production featurettes—“A New Story,” “On the Set,” and “Snatched” (9 min. total)—and trailers. Bottom line: an unimpressive extras package for an unimpressive film.] (F. Swietek)