People keep complaining that there's no originality left in Hollywood, and here comes "The Invasion" to back up their argument. This marks the
third remake of the 1956 sci-fi thriller "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers," based on Jack Finney's beloved novel
The Body Snatchers. And it's not a case of "the more the merrier" - the 2007 version is easily the worst one yet. Hello, rock bottom.
"The Invasion" is a shockingly bad rehash of just about every sci-fi, action, end-of-the-world cliché ever conjured up. This time around, the story follows Carol Bennell (Nicole Kidman), a Washington D.C psychiatrist who notices that people are starting to act awfully strange following a space shuttle crash. Her first clue is when one of her patients (Veronica Cartwright) declares, "My husband is not my husband." Which sounds like the type of wacky thing she's probably used to hearing in sessions, only this time it's true.
It turns out that the crash landing has wrought an alien epidemic, where humans are infected with the virus and their DNA is transformed during a deep sleep. Those affected appear like their former selves, except they show no emotion and walk around like dronish zombies. (The way to tell someone is an alien? Their eyes are glazed over and they look as enthusiastic as kids in Sunday School.)
In a quest to stop the virus from destroying mankind, Bennell recruits the help of a rugged friend/colleague (Daniel Craig) and gifted scientist (Jeffrey Wright) to put an end to the madness. Meanwhile, she has to stay awake long enough to track down and save her doe-eyed son (Jackson Bond) from his father (Jeremy Northam), an official for the Center For Disease Control who is giving people the virus under the guise of a "flu" inoculation.
So what's so stupid about this movie? Just about everything. German director Oliver Hirschbiegel ("Downfall") shoots every scene with a jittery, grocery store monotone, and newbie scriptwriter Dave Kajganich litters the screen with inane dialogue that's B-movie stupid but too self-serious to be funny (one particular gem: "500 years ago there were no post-modern feminists, but you find yourself sitting next to one today"). Among the many missteps: people knocking on doors to build suspense, climactic car chases, epiphany montages and dogs with a supernatural sixth sense. "The Invasion" has, literally, nothing new to say.
Not even the spiffy Wachowski brothers and James McTeigue, who previously collaborated on
"V For Vendetta", could jazz up this dud (they were brought in for final-hour reshoots and rewrites). Though, arguably, they had a hand in making it mildly watchable - all the more frightening to imagine what it looked like originally.
The slogan for "The Invasion" is "Do not trust anyone. Do not show emotion. Do not fall asleep." Here's a better one - Do not bother.
