Matthew Bennell assumes that when a friend complains of her husband's strange mood, it's a marital issue. But soon he discovers that the human race is being replaced one by one, with clones devoid of emotion.
This film wants to have it both ways: to have a more urbane, more "important" scope than the original, and yet retain some of its inexpensive intimacy as well.
Emotionally stirring, visually striking and having not aged a day, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" cries out for individuality in a skewed, nightmarish totalitarian reality. The results are as squirmily potent in 2016 as they no doubt were in 1978.
Set at the intersection of post-Vietnam paranoia and the myopic introspection that became hippiedom's most lasting cultural contribution, the Philip Kaufman-directed Invasion alternates social commentary with impeccably crafted scares.
ColeSmithey.com
August 05, 2014
[VIDEO ESSAY] Thematically, the film's allegory regarding viral-groupthink has plenty of wiggle-room for interpretation because it is so profoundly vague yet universal.
The 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers remains the best of the four adaptations, but this second take is similarly noteworthy and continues to grow in stature over the years.
It's interesting to observe how Kaufman and screenwriter W.D. Richter contrive to exploit and refine elements from both Finney's novel and Siegel's film in the new movie version, an unusually imaginative and adroit but also self-conscious remake.
