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Hollywood Hues
This is precisely the case with The Invasion when the mysterious crash of a space shuttle leads to the bizarre discovery that there is something alien in the wreckage and these forces are changing the very personality of the humans. Strangely, this extraterrestrial epidemic attacks its victims when they are asleep, leaving them physically unchanged but imbuing them with totally different personas. So, in a few days one is unable to differentiate between the humans and the extraterrestrials. It is a doomsday situation with a cerebral twist. Washington D.C. psychiartrist Carol Bennell (Nicole Kidman) and her colleague Ben Driscoll (Daniel Craig) learn the shocking truth about this growing extraterrestrial epidemic through their patients. But how can it be arrested, or even contained. That Carol has divorced her husband Tucker (Jeremy Northam) and lives with their son gives the story a human touch and to make matters worse Tucker is an employ of the United States Government which maintains a strict secrecy about its space programmes. This is the second remake of the film, the first was in the early 1950s and the second in the late-1970s and had Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams in the main roles. There the organisms were tendriller and better developed. It is based on Jack Finney’s novel The Body Snatchers and the 1970s film was called The Invasion of the body Snatchers. May be distance lends enchantment to view making it scarier but director Oliver Hirschbiegel does well to get into the nitty-gritty of things with good establishing shots. That Carol and Ben are in love provides the romantic angle. Needless footage is devoted to Carol’s profession and the action is unduly drawn out. The screenplay by David Kajanich could have been more terse and the physical elements more graphic. But this apart, one can’t fault the strength of the narrative and Nicole Kidman does her best to make the part credible. The new Bond Daniel Craig isn’t in the same league and Jeremy Northam is merely academic. If only the last quarter could have been more concise? The twists and turns in the plot help and when all is said and done The Invasion is an engrossing horror movie, except that it stutters to a rather predictable ending.— E.E.M.
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Science
fiction has generally come to be associated with something physical,
like war of the worlds or creatures from outer space. But when the
change is cerebral and changes the whole psyche of a human being, it
is even more terrifying.
