10 Movie Remakes With Better Endings Than The Original

As much as many remakes are shambling, soulless facsimiles of what came before, not Philip Kaufman's 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Don Siegel's 1956 original, a sci-fi classic in its own right, nevertheless ends with the FBI finally being alerted to the presence of the pod people and the town of Santa Mira being barricaded, suggesting that humanity will indeed prevail.

But the '78 film offers up a far more nihilistic and hopeless vision, with protagonist Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) one of the few remaining survivors in the city, while the extraterrestrials are preparing to expand their operations to other West Coast cities.

In the film's chilling final scene, fellow survivor Nancy (Veronica Cartwright) approaches Matthew on the street, only for him to point at her and let out a high-pitched shriek, confirming that he has also been turned into a pod person, and so too will she.

Unlike the '56 film, there's not even a hint that humanity might bounce back from the alien invasion, but rather the suggestion that Earth will be slowly subverted and conquered by these creatures. Brilliant, and terrifying in ways that the more typically Hollywood original film never could be.