Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
8/18/07
Each
time we go to sleep, we quietly hope against hope that we will wake up.
Each time we put our trust in someone we know, we take a leap of faith
that they have not “changed” since the last time we trusted them.
And each time we are alone in a crowd of strangers, there's the slightest
subconscious fear that they might all be preparing, as one, to turn against
us. When Jack Finney wrote The Body Snatchers in 1954, he
seemed to pull his story directly from our collective unconscious, hitting
so many universal fears and nightmares that it's difficult to craft a film
version that's not disturbing and resonant. That extends to its'
political subtext as well, since just about everyone views the groups that
disagree with them as monolithic entities determined to destroy all resistance
to what they stand for. The Invasion, the 4th film version
of Finney's novel, leans perhaps a bit too heavily on its' potential as
a political allegory, and seems to go out of its' way to wear a troubled
production history that included multiple directors on its' sleeve.
But it remains sensationally creepy and might make you think twice the
next time someone offers to make you a cup of coffee.
The
story begins with the crash of the Space Shuttle Patriot, which breaks
up on reentry and scatters pieces across half the United States.
Americans are advised not to touch the wreckage, but inevitably some do,
including Tucker Kaufman (Jeremy Northram) of the Centers for Disease Control.
Once he does so, he undergoes a strange metamorphosis overnight, and awakens
unnaturally calm and determined to reconnect with his ex-wife Carol Bennell
(Nicole Kidman) and their son Oliver (Jackson Bond). He also joins
colleagues in publicizing a flu outbreak and announcing a national vaccination
program. Carol, who's dating Dr. Ben Driscoll (Daniel Craig), is
nervous about turning her son over to her estranged husband, but soon she's
got other worries. Patients begin telling her that their spouses
are NOT their spouses, particularly Wendy Lenk (Veronica Cartwright, who
was also in the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers), who recounts
seriously disturbing behavior by her husband (Adam LeFevre), backed up
when he arrives at the office the next day determined to “take her home”
should she show up. On Trick or Treat night, a strange piece of tissue
ends up mixed with Oliver's candy, and Carol takes it to Ben, who in turn
takes it to Dr. Stephen Galeano (Jeffrey Wright). The results aren't
good: it's an alien virus which bonds with human cells and rewrites
our DNA while we sleep. The infected show no emotion and are hell-bent
on spreading the virus to others. Seemingly overnight, the uninfected
have become a hunted minority, dragged away by police for their “vaccination”.
Cut off from her son and struggling to show no emotion in the streets,
Carol fights to hold on to her humanity and to discover a cure. But
to do that, she has to stay awake.
The
bulk of The Invasion was filed in early 2006 as The Visiting
and scheduled for a Summer release that year. Its' date came and
went while Warner Bros. quietly tried to figure out what to do with a cut
they weren't at all happy with. Producer Joel Silver brought in Matrix
auteurs Larry and Andy Wachowski and their frequent collaborator director
James McTeigue (V for Vendetta) to do rewrites, reshoots and to
generally restructure the film. The result has many of the flaws
one associates with films heavily re-edited after bad test screenings:
montages that review past scenes and dialog (and even throw in a few moments
from deleted scenes) to make sure we're following along, jump cuts that
move the characters quickly through space to make scenes shorter, and accents
by Kidman and Craig that are all over the globe. A car chase climax
has its' share of Wachowski-approved action (particularly when Kidman puts
the pedal down while her car is literally covered with bodies trying to
get at her), and the film's themes fit nicely into their collection of
sci-fi stories about paranoia and government conspiracy.
What
The Invasion does best is to work the Body Snatcher story
through our Katrina-era sense that the parts of the Government that appear
designed to help us out during times of crisis are in fact against us.
Of course the CDC wants everyone to believe in a flu epidemic and take
a shot... it'll turn them into soulless aliens! I liked how the infected
people take such quick and methodical advantage of our tendency not to
question things: they can spread the virus through projectile vomiting
(yuck!), and at the press conference where Kaufman announces the vaccination
program, reporters are served cup after cup of coffee while the wait staff
stands in the back of the room casually vomiting into the pots. It
takes little effort for them to turn a government we already expect to
be exercising extreme police powers for our own good into an infection
machine. “It's so easy,” Kaufman tells Carol of the conversion process,
“All you have to do is nothing.”
The
film has less success trying to more directly tie the invasion into real-life
concerns like the War in Iraq. At one point we watch a creepy CNN
broadcast that shows infected leaders resolving all their disagreements
and spreading peace and cooperation throughout the world, but the movie
doesn't have a lot of luck successfully suggesting that our humanity is
the cause of all our problems. After all, the infected are even more
terrifyingly efficient at identifying and eliminating “the other”.
And while infected people talk of interest in family and happiness, nothing
about their actions or their manner suggest that any positive attributes
are in their altered DNA. This would be fine (the 1978 Body Snatchers
movie is particularly adept at showing us pods who talk the talk of being
better people but can't walk the walk), but the movie wants to say something
Big about the link between humanity and atrocity that it can't quite wrap
its' heavily re-edited brain around. Roger Rees, as a boorish Russian
diplomat, gets a Big Speech on the subject that the movie's so proud of
it trots it out twice, but it fails to make any good points. At the
end, are we supposed to breath a sigh of relief and say “Thank Goodness
we're in Iraq: the only alternative is to be emotionless aliens”?
But
while the themes occasionally grate, the heart of the movie, Carol's attempt
to save her son and survive the genetic onslaught, delivers the goods.
The polite, puking infectees are endlessly disturbing, and I held my breath
for Carol every single time she had to try and pass among them. I
really liked the way the uninfected quietly whisper advice to each other
in the streets (“You're sweating. They don't do that,” a cop unexpectedly
tells her at one point): there are some really effective performances
by actors with only a line or two that give you the sense that you're in
the middle of a worldwide struggle. While Kidman does battle her
accent throughout, she's perfectly cast. Cold, professional distance
and bone-chilling terror are two of her best notes as an actress and she
does a good job delivering both as well as convincingly struggling to stay
awake (Mt. Dew product placement was never more welcome). Craig's
role is pretty standard, but he brings his usual presence to it.
Bond gives a great, natural performance as Oliver: it's hard enough
for kids to seem real onscreen, but in this kind of story it's twice as
challenging. Northram shines as the bureaucrat whose entire career
has prepared him to infect the world, and Wright brings spunk and energy
to a role full of exposition. While original (and sole credited)
director Oliver Hirschbiegel presided over a troubled shoot, the one thing
he did exceptionally well was set a suspenseful tone.
The
Invasion is actually the scariest movie I've seen in a while, and a
lot of the credit for that goes to the power of Jack Finney's original
concept. While it's been reimagined (this is the first filming where
the infected simply “become” the pods rather than being replaced by them)
and brought to a close that steals heavily from the “other” early 50's
“worldwide alien takeover” classic, Robert Heinlein's The Puppet Masters,
it generates an impressively oppressive atmosphere of paranoia and made
me really nervous about taking a drink from the soda I'd bought.
In the waning days of the summer movie season, what else can you ask for? |
