The Invasion
starring Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Jeremy Northam, Jackson Bond and Jeffrey Wright
screenplay by David Kajganich
directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel
This is yet another movie version of the Jack Finney book The Body Snatchers. It was made into a movie in 1956 (starring Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter, directed by Don Siegel) and again in 1978 (starring Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum and Leonard Nimoy [Mr. Spock], directed by Philip Kaufman). How many times can Hollywood re-make a movie? I guess there is no limit. The Body Snatchers story is a great, spooky story, and so there is no end to the number of times it can be re-made for new generations of movie-watchers because it is truly and profoundly a story of our times - very similar to the Will Smith film I Am Legend (a re-make of the Charleton Heston film The Omega Man). These three films have the shared effect of making you afraid of the dark, or afraid to go to sleep: really scary. Still, for me, unless a re-make is exceptionally good - which this is not - I am tired of watching re-makes of old movies I watched as a youngster. So this new version of The Body Snatchers doesn’t blow any air up my skirt. But if you don’t know the story and have never seen any version of it, go ahead.
I love Jeffrey Wright. Black actors, like bald actors, really turn me on. And, I think Nicole Kidman’s talent was wasted here. But he does not convince me in the role of an immune military researcher in the story.