Washington, DC psychiatrist Carol Bennell’s (Nicole Kidman) world is changing. Her ex-husband and head of the Center for Disease Control Tucker Kaufman (Jeremy Northam) is back in town to brief the President about a recent space shuttle disaster and has asked to spend time with the couple’s son Oliver (Jackson Bond). This makes Carol uncomfortable, maybe even a little scared, but the man is the boy’s father so in the end their probably isn’t too much to actually worry about. 

Nicole Kidman must stop an attack of body snatchers in Warner Bros' The Invasion

Or is there? People have been acting weird ever since the shuttle’s crash landing, people like Carol’s long-time patient Wendy Lenk (Veronica Cartwright) who suddenly starts claiming her husband isn’t really her husband. With the help of good friend Dr. Ben Driscoll (Daniel Craig) and his associate Dr. Stephen Galeano (Jeffrey Wright) the trio discovers the world is under attack, people across the globe becoming emotionless drones for an alien microbe consuming while they sleep. 

Soon Carol is infected with this microbe, a robotic Tucker one of the ringleaders helping facilitate the invasion. But the terrified psychiatrist cannot give up and she cannot give in. Oliver is in danger and she must get him to safety. These newly human aliens will try to stop her, but nothing is going to stand in the way of this mother giving everything she has to preserve the life of her only child. Nothing, that is, as long as she doesn’t go to sleep.

The Invasion is the fourth time Jack Finney’s landmark 1955 novel The Body Snatchers has been made into a motion picture. Don Siegel’s 1956 adaptation Invasion of the Body Snatchers is an outright classic, truly one of the greatest cinematic sci-fi suspense stories ever told. Philip Kaufman’s 1978 same-name remake is nearly as good, that one a nerve-wracking horror show with a final imagine so potent it gave me nightmares as a little kid. Finally there was Abel Ferrara’s little-seen 1993 version Body Snatchers, that story of military mistrust and unease far more effective and unsettling then critics and audiences at the time gave the film credit for.

Now comes this new version of the story, this time played out in a very contemporary United States and one that comments on everything from political mistrust to global warming to the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. It posits some incredibly interesting questions and, much like the other three, asks its audience whether individuality and freewill are all that they’re cracked up to be in a world seemingly overrun with pollution, genocide, natural disaster and war.

Strange, then, that these questions and their obvious answers (individuality is a good thing and freedom of expression – and of emotion – should be protected at all costs) are fleshed out in a picture supposedly as controversial and problematic as this one was. German director Oliver Hirschbiegel may be listed in the film’s credits, but according to rumor producer Joel Silver had him replaced and brought in the Wachowski brothers and V for Vendetta director James McTeigue to re-shoot the entire second half.

Why? Well, if you believe all the backstage talk it was because the picture wasn’t a typical summer movie. Not enough action. Too much emphasis on character and plot. Not enough tension. No wow-factor to send the audience out on a high. In other words, his version was – see if you can catch the irony – too original to be released in such a sequel, animation and action-driven season such as the one we currently find ourselves coming to the close of. Granted, considering Hirschbiegel’s made the Hitler docudrama Downfall and the claustrophobic thriller Das Experiment one has to wonder why producers were so startled by the finished film they originally received in the first place.

How much of this is true and how much is Hollywood supisition we will probably never know. What we do know is that The Invasion is, while far from a disaster, a moderately engaging (sometimes even entertainingly suspenseful) mess. What starts out like a paranoia-fueled potboiler about identity suddenly shifts gears into a screeching tires and explosion-laden typically brain dead Hollywood summer opus. It’s like there were two different films fighting for supremacy, the louder and more obnoxious of the pair finally winning out in a mighty Neanderthal yell of supremacy.

Yet somehow with all this being the case I did not mind sitting in the theater. While the idiocies tend to pile up like last week’s newspapers and some of the continuity errors are as obvious as the difference between hot and cold, there is a certain inherent power to Finney’s central story that surprisingly remains intact. There are even some effective nods to the previous versions, Cartwright’s fidgety performance (she was also in Kaufman’s version) being the most obvious. 

Don’t get me wrong. The Invasion is still an exceedingly muddled failure desperately trying to figure out what it is and which story it wants to tell. It looks great thanks to cinematographer Rainer Klausmann (Downfall), and John Ottman’s (Superman Returns) suitably unnerving score certainly sounds wonderful, but technical accomplishment alone does not a motion picture make. For all its small delights (and there are many), this new body snatcher invasion is a battle not worth fighting.

Film Rating: êê  (out of 4)

Additonal Links

-  The Invasion Theatrical Trailer