By: Justin Hopkins

**SPOILER WARNING**

  And here we are. The end of the Invasion Of The Body Snatcher movies. It has been a fun ride throughout. While the 1978 version has been clinging to its number one spot. There hasn’t been a bad movie in the bunch. Both the 1956 version and Body Snatchers from 1993 were both really good films with plenty of their own ideas and spins on the ball. So, much so I was looking forward to see what the 2007 The Invasion brought to the table. Much like I did in part 2 in this run; I won’t be covering the 1978 version here, since I already did it in Part 1 and would just be a copy and paste deal. So, if you want to check out my review for that, hop back a run and check out my Part 1. As a bonus, at the very end, will have all four listed from the least to most liked. Alright, with that said, let’s dive into The Invasion shall we.

  The Invasion 2007

We start off with flashing lights and the main character going through a pharmacy. Telling herself to not go asleep. Looking for pills and drinks to keep herself awake. Seeing a door shaking. People pounding on the other side. Trying to get inside. When we jump back in time to see a space ship crashing down to Earth. Breaking to pieces on re-entry to Earth. News Reports are describing how wide spread the wreckage is. Pieces are being found from Dallas to D.C. Some people were wisely staying away. While other have touched it. CDC Agent Tucker is checking out one of the crash sites. Finding their is an unknown Alien Life Form on them. On his way out, a woman brings a piece that had fallen on her roof, and he cuts himself on it, before leaving and while he is asleep that night. Begins to change. We then jump to Carol. Being awaken her son screaming, from a nightmare. We find out that she is a single Mom who was having custody issues with the Father, and that he would be getting Oliver later that night. The Father turns out to be Tucker, the infected CDC Agent from the night before and there is a lot of animosity between them. We meet her friend Ben, who is worked up by the news, who she confides in over what is going on with Tucker, and he calms her down by pointing out how much Oliver loves her and such and she goes off to work. She is a psychiatrist, whose first patient is a woman who normally is abused by her husband, claiming that he was not her husband. Telling her that he doesn’t even get mad. The dog knew and tried to attack, but he broke the dogs neck and tossed it in the trash. Not showing any signs of emotion through the assault. Carol gives her a new prescription and tells her to call if anything happens. Later that night while her and a friend had their kids trick or treating. A dog attacks one of the kids. Who doesn’t even react. Easily powering the dogs muzzle shut before they get the dog off him.  Acting very strangely when the kids or going through their candy. When Oliver yells they find a strange bit of skin on his hand. They assume that it was from someone’s house but she takes it with her. On her way to taking Oliver to his Dad’s. A woman attacks the car inside a tunnel. Yelling about how they are coming, before she gets rundown by a jeep. She gets out to try and help and offers to be a witness, but the cop doesn’t want to hear it and ushers her out. Meanwhile, we see a meeting at Congress. Discussing a new strand of flu and a questionable new vaccine, but pretty much forces the one to question it to take it seriously or lose out. In the back we see infected spitting up into the drinks before serving it to them Going back to Carol.  After an awkward exchange, between her and Tucker. She goes off on her “date” with Ben and has an interesting conversation with one of the people there, about how people don’t change who they are unless the people part is removed and she disagrees with him by pointing out how far we had come, and I will leave it with that.

Yet, again, they did try to change the story a bit. Which even I was wondering how they could. Having an even bigger hill to climb being the fourth telling of the tale, but they did alright.  Again, they were very intense and aggressive. Wanting to get everyone infected as fast as possible. Loved their tests, like when the two jumped off the bridge and swarmed the people below who had an emotional response. Adding an immunity was really neat as well. Never seeing that before and was an avenue we hadn’t seen before. They did change the way people were converted and while it was creative, going to talk more on that later.

They did an alright job building a bit of tense with the drinks. When they spit up into the drinks, and took a moment to pan over the drinks during the dinner. Created a bit of an atmosphere of not knowing if they were spiked or not, but didn’t go beyond that scene. With us knowing the score it was a fun way to create a bit of paranoia that we wouldn’t get from whose infected and not, because we already know what to look for.  This gave us something new, but didn’t last long enough.

I enjoyed the ending they had here. They found the cure and were beating the alien virus, but the good news that was coming through during the invasion. North Korea agreeing to disarmament and countries that never work together finally coming together, reverts back to the horrible mass deaths happening again and a piece of the argument over nothing changes as long as people remain playing over top. Asking the question of would it had been better had the alien virus won. Something they always said, but was kind of proven in one news article. Good way to close without going back to the well of.. or is it?

I don’t have much to say on the casting. Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig were excellent. Kind of wish we got more of an infected Craig, but each played the roles perfectly. They did a great job at building the friendship that was starting to blossom into more. So, when things start happening and story starts going. You feel more inclined to get behind them. Jeremy Northam was a chilling Tucker Kaufman. Had a fun little return of Veronica Cartwright who played Nancy in the 1978 version. A good job from everyone involved.

Alright, onto the negatives and there were a few. For starters, I don’t like to point out logic issues, but this one was blatantly dumb, and that was at the start. Tucker, A CDC Agent, gets cut by a piece of the debris, that he was just informed was contaminated with an unknown spore, and does nothing but goes home. I get that he has to leave infected, but this was a dumb way to do it. He wouldn’t just leave and no one would let him leave and just a dumb way to go.

As I said they changed the transformation, from going away from pods to them just needing to spit up into a person’s mouth or drink and when they sleep they cocoon and shed into the alien version of themselves. Which was interesting, but doesn’t really cut it for me. It loses the disturbing visuals and feels more like an infection then something extraterrestrial. And the dream sequence of her attacking the alien version to wake up was weak.

While, one of my issues of Body Snatchers was that they needed more time to build the characters, this one did that, but the pacing was an issue. By panning away to show the meeting with them spitting in tea and scenes that could have kick started things off just kind of ends. An entire subway scene set up to inform her that she has to act calm so they can’t tell she is human then a whole other stop to add the sweating aspect. None of these scenes were inherently bad, but really slow things down.  Final Grade: B

Winner: Invasion Of The Body Snatchers 1978

Don’t let the low grade fool you. It was still enjoyable, but wasn’t enough to take down 1978. None of them are bad movie. Each being enjoyable in there own ways and have loved doing this series. As promised, my official list is;

4. The Invasion

3. Body Snatchers

2. Invasion Of The Body Snatchers 1956

1. Invasion Of The Body Snatchers 1978

As always, I hope you enjoyed reading and..

Thank You For Reading.