THE INVASION

With that terrifying underlying prospect that "they get you when you sleep" Jack Finney's archetypal 1955 novel The Body Snatchers - about alien lifeforms imposing an overwhelming emotionless totalitarianism - has always been a source for continuous celluloid revival. And, like the Alien films the Body Snatcher translations have that unique prestige of being a series shaped by a unique auteurist vision, with each subsequent installment given directorial distinction by each reputable director, in conjunction to being a reflective political product of its time. In Don Siegel's original black and white 1956 version the mounting persuasion of the pod people attacking a small town appeared to reflect that era's intrusive McCarthyism or the prospect of communism in general. Twenty odd years later Philip Kaufman's cleverly conspiracy conscious 1978 version brought the fear to an American city, (namely San Francisco) in a decade still tarnished by the effects of Nixon and the Watergate Scandal. While Abel Ferrara's twilight-set 1993 effort, renamed Body Snatchers, placed the pod people attacking a remote Alabama US military base €“ in a climate still recovering from the then recent first Gulf War. Its politically prominent that a mere 14 years have passed for another version to surface. This time taking the other half of the original title and given added nuance by being driven (almost entirely) by Downfall director Oliver Hirschbiegel. Given increased A-Lister leverage by stars Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, playing single mum psychiatrist Carol Bennell and good-natured love interest scientist Ben Driscoll respectively, Hirschbiegel's version relocates to the Washington state but has an overbearing global resonance. Hirschbiegel doesn't veer too far from the source material: After a space shuttle crash lands in America, a supposed epidemic spreads with people acting strangely, but its his development of a slowly menacing mounting terror and effective flair for claustrophobic containment that proves Hirschbiegel's intoxicating distinction. When Carol's 'first infected' ex-husband Tucker (played with appropriate emotionless menace by Jeremy Northam) calls her out of the blue and pleads her and son Oliver to get back together as a family, you feel the disturbing hold he has on her, like a predator homing in on its reluctant prey. Contrary to the lacksure box office and critical mauling the film has received in the US, this is a brilliantly realised and gripping addition to the well-regarded series. What makes it so riveting is that everything is zipped up and teased out for so long that you suspect an ominous menace closing in on the protagonists, as and when the protagonists experience it themselves. Veronica Cartwright's meaty cameo as Carol's necrotic patient (she played doomed sauna co-owner Nancy in Kaufman's 1978 installment) nicely establishes the mood of impending doom when she implies that "my husband is not my husband". These films are frightening because the protagonists are in a situation where the odds of survival are seriously pitted against them and because the monster is overtly 'invisible' and generally faceless. When psychiatrist Carol is stared at by passing commuters on a bus €“ in a rerun of flashback suspicions felt by Brooke Adams' character in Kaufman's version €“ you feel her deepening anxiety. Just like when you travel on the underground and get the feeling that your blank faced, all staring, seemingly emotionless fellow commuters could be from another planet. Like Kaufman's version its the experience of sudden fright that can sometimes prove the most rewarding. Although suspicions are aroused when a late-in-the-night census man comes calling, your not quite ready for the sudden jolting open-mouthed characteristic yelp that mummers from the sinister stranger. Similarly Hirschbiegel knows that motioning restraint can prove just as effective, especially during a scene when Carol has to play 'pod' during one particularly tense dinner table situation. And Kidman is pretty conniving as protagonist Carol, installing her almost impossible plight against faceless tormentors with real gust and genuine emotion, (or without emotion, when the role requires her to pose as one of the pod-people). Equally impressive is Daniel Craig as her stubbornly determined colleague boyfriend, who was subsequently selected as Bond during filming, (no doubt alongside his future Casino Royale co-star Jeffrey Wright). But flaws can be found if you look for them. I feel restraint could have been considered in the use of CGI during certain moments, especially by the way we are presented with the rather pretentious inner workings of the contagion eroding the body, and some of the transformation sequences could have benefited more from some of Kaufman's scarily tangible prosthetics in the earlier version rather then the animated morphing we have here. But these films have always worked for me because of what you don't always know €“ and what is concealed from sight. That slight suspenseful blank-faced pause that occurs during a confrontation with another character that hasn't been seen for a while, to prevent arousing suspicion to a potential pod-person, is always chilling. Mankind's primal instincts are given an overbearing analysis too. During a dinner party scene a Russian challenges Carol over human natures' animalistic origin with particular regards to the war on Iraq. And the lines appear decidedly blurred between the proposed Utopian ideals of the pod people against the sometime murderous, war-raging motions of mankind. Controversy loomed over Hirschbiegel's original cut when it was presented to the studio who didn't like the version he delivered and subsequently demanded rewrites and several reshoots by another director. It would be interesting to view a director's cut on DVD in the future to see exactly what were the scenes that were reshot. For my money the ending was probably altered somewhat and there lies the weakness with this version, (which I obviously won't even hint at here). The Invasion joins a slew of recent war-on-terror films (The Kingdom, Rendition, Lions for Lambs) that can't help but be relevant to our current uncertain political climate. And while it doesn't give Siegel's or Kaufman's superior Body Snatcher versions cause for concern, this is still a brooding, suspenseful conspiracy thriller and a worthy edition to the series that, amidst our unsettling times is becoming scarily precedent. The Invasion is a good enjoyably old-fashioned shocker, a bit preachy perhaps but certainly not one to take too seriously.

rating: 3.5