Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on August 17, 2007, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
The Invasion isn’t so much a terrible movie as it is a massively wasted opportunity. It’s a testament to the durability and pliability of the premise first established in Jack Finney’s novel The Body Snatchers that we’re now seeing the fourth cinematic adaptation in five decades, following interpretations by Don Siegel (1956), Philip Kaufman (’78) and Abel Ferrara (the undercelebrated ’94 version). Each of these filmmakers tied the basic storyline—humanity overtaken by alien beings that duplicate the populace, minus emotion—in to social and political issues of the time, and a few stabs in that direction are made by The Invasion as well. Setting the events in Washington, D.C. for the first time is a fine jumping-off point for commenting in a sci-fi/horror context about the troubled state of our government and society—but the final product winds up saying more, indirectly, about artistic corruption in Hollywood.
It may be somewhat unfair to view The Invasion in the context of its troubled history, but it’s practically impossible not to. The end credits refer to “An Oliver Hirschbiegel Film,” but don’t you believe it; as has been revealed all over the Internet and the hard press, the German director’s first cut was judged not exciting enough by the Warner Bros. brass, who gave him the heave-ho and brought in The Matrix’s Wachowski Brothers and their V for Vendetta director James McTeigue to goose the pacing and action quotient. The result is a movie of uncertain tone that lurches unsteadily from one scene to the next and, the longer it goes on, seems increasingly desperate to hold the audience’s attention; at one point, a crucial dialogue scene is pointlessly intercut with flash-forwards to a subsequent car-chase setpiece. “I’m so afraid I’m going to fall asleep,” star Nicole Kidman says in this film series’ classic plea, and there’s little doubt the studio brass had the same concern about their viewers.
Kidman plays Carol Bennell, a D.C. psychiatrist whose estranged ex-husband, Center for Disease Control bigwig Tucker Kaufman (Jeremy Northam), is on the scene after a space shuttle crashes to Earth. In the first of several implausibly played scenes, Tucker winds up infected by alien spores that hitched a ride on the doomed shuttle, and suddenly Tucker is showing a renewed interest in seeing his and Carol’s son Oliver (Jackson Bond). Carol is a tad concerned about this development, but lets the boy spend the night at Tucker’s place; meanwhile, her patients (including Veronica Cartwright, from the ’78 film, in an effective cameo) are starting to complain that their loved ones “aren’t themselves.” Those familiar with this premise will know what’s up, but then, so will anyone watching the movie, since the filmmakers reveal right away that infectees become coated with slime as they sleep, and wake up as zombielike shells of their former selves.
In the scenario devised by screenwriter Dave Kajganich, the famous pods of the previous films have been abandoned, along with the mystery surrounding the invaders’ activities. Instead, in keeping with the gross-out tone of these cinematic times, the “disease” spreads via slimeballs that those already infected hock into people’s faces and drinks like parasitical loogies. Once Carol cottons to what’s going on—in part thanks to exposition delivered by a scientist played by Jeffrey Wright, who’s wasted in this functional role—she goes on the run with doctor friend Ben Driscoll (Daniel Craig), trying to rescue Oliver from Tucker’s clutches and escape the growing hordes of pod…er, slime people trying to make her one of them.
Hirschbiegel is the first foreigner to direct a film version of this plot, and the idea of an outsider dramatizing the state of the U.S. under this particular type of infestation held promise. There are hints of metaphorical ambition scattered though The Invasion: Scenes set on Halloween, a night when so many take on other identities; visual references to American tragedies from the shuttle crash to 9/11 (a couple holding hands and jumping from a building); and glimpses of TV news reports that peace is spreading throughout the world as the possession takes international root. This last idea seems to have been, at one point, the crucial theme of The Invasion, as the characters occasionally address our species’ propensity for violence, and whether a human race not constantly in conflict could still be considered human. It’s likely that Hirschbiegel’s original version actually had a point of view about this concept, but it gets lost as the movie becomes a generic chase flick.
The basic premise is still potent enough to evoke a few chills here and there, but The Invasion could and should have been so much more, especially given the talent involved. Kidman seems earnest, at least, but isn’t seen to her best advantage in this role, and Craig’s sedate characterization is a disappointment after his striking turn in Casino Royale. (To give an idea of how long this tortured production has been in the works, Craig was in the midst of making The Invasion when he first got the word that he had landed the 007 part.) By the finale, when Carol is racing through the streets of what is clearly LA and not D.C., on the way to a hasty, thoroughly unconvincing and also obviously reshot wrapup, it’s evident that The Invasion has been taken over by Hollywood’s own version of the pod…er, slime people: executives who would rather lull audiences with generic action than ask them to think.
