A few more days here, another sixteen years there, and we come to the next installment in this run through the evolution of the Body Snatchers series.
As I've gotten older, I've come to realize I don't get the same zeal in a bad movie takedown I once did. There's definitely a catharsis to it, but it's not something I find myself going out of my way for the way I used to.
I'm saying that up front for a reason – I didn't go into this one expecting a cinematic drag. With that in mind, I'm still willing to admit The Invasion is probably the most disappointing watch I have had tied to this project since switching to the franchise format.
Besides the fact this just makes the whole thing look
incredibly vague and uninteresting, the knowledge that
Daniel Craig's career just gets THAT much better
after this just makes his being squandered here hurt that much more.
Yes, I say this even after having watched 2011's The Thing and Omen IV: The Awakening. The Thing, while misfired, seemed to have its heart in the right place, and Omen IV at least managed to get an honest to God laugh out of me (albeit not by design.) That still puts them both ahead of The Invasion for me in the final estimate.
Again, I want to make this very clear – I went into this trying to find good in it. I won't pretend I wasn't skeptical, but I still gave it the benefit of the doubt. Hell, I was even getting curious to see how it'd play in the aftermath of the first three in relatively short succession.
Turns out, sadly, not very well. From the jump, this surpasses Ferrara in terms of taking departures from the source. Granted, on its own, departure can be a good thing, but there's still a limit. In this version, much of the old premise is gone – of the original pod concept, the only thing that they seemed to maintain was an alien lifeform (the pod is now a spore) that needs you to sleep to take over. Granted, even the reasoning there has been altered – the spore doesn't so much grow a new you as it infects you and rewrites you, with sleep as a catalyst (and the infection now spread by people vomiting on their targets. No, you read that right.)
Pictured - a still from a setpiece that literally involves
dodging vomit on the subway.
Go look it up. I'm not making this up.
I'll wait.
With that tenuous a connection, it was hard not to suspect, while watching, that this movie started as something else and then in the process got retooled into a Body Snatchers movie – certainly common enough in the realm of horror sequels and remakes. Surprisingly, this is one time where the process was reversed – the project was meant to be a more straightforward adaptation, then the writer diverged wildly in an attempt to modernize it, leading to what we got back in 2007.
Again, difference in and of itself isn't a bad thing. If this were a better movie, I'd likely be commending it for its taking the chance. As it is though, the changes don't really feel like they add much to the movie, save for someone deciding this series had a criminal lack of people spitting/puking on each other.
I'm trying not to harp too much on the changes, lest this simply read as purist rage. The problem is, unlike with earlier changes in content, I'm not entirely clear as to the why of many of the changes beyond 'it's modern.'
For a series that I have earlier lauded for its ability to adapt its themes to the concerns of the time, The Invasion is particularly frustrating. I've given it some time since watching trying to parse out a singular theme it's trying to explore to the extent the previous versions did (even if by accident in 56) and it all just keeps coming back to the immortal words of David Byrne: “You're talking a lot, but you're not saying anything.”
and while I'm comparing this to films which felt like
they had a clearer idea what they wanted to convey -
spending a large chunk of this in a supermarket just
left me wanting to watch The Mist.
For a movie made in 2007, it does feel like it's trying to make some commentary with its changes. The new method of transmission, for example, could read as addressing the growing concern with flu outbreaks – albeit that theme then makes a strange read of the movie's use of inoculations, which in the current environment, can manage to read first as anti, then pro vaccination.
I'd be inclined to give more of the benefit of the doubt that they weren't quite intending a theme there, but for the fact that the changes were in the interest of a more modern take to begin with, to say nothing for the fact that, by the fourth go around, the idea that a Body Snatchers movie is saying something is sort of expected by now unless the people making it say otherwise.
Which leads to probably one of the biggest issues with what this movie is saying – when it addresses the idea of humanity and emotion. It's a concept that's been at the core of every iteration of the series, even in its more (relatively) apolitical early incarnation. In truth, the series started to drift from this with Ferrara, but it's such a stark departure here as to become jarring.
In earlier iterations, the idea of the negative side of human emotions is simply framed as part of the pods' argument – they offer humanity a freedom from fear, hate, etc, albeit at the cost of the positive emotions such as joy and love that other versions offer as a counter point. In this, the emphasis feels almost exclusively fixed on the negative emotions, with human characters dwelling on it even before the aliens start taking them over. Even when the movie ends with humanity surviving the titular invasion, it is presented with a dour counterpoint as Jeffrey Wright only dwells on all those more negative traits of humanity surviving.
Also adding to the 'Where were you going with this?' factor:
This version has people who just have inherent
immunity to the spore. For seemingly no other reason
than to justify the 'happy' ending.
Just wanted to observe that is all.
On one hand, I get it – it was 2007 (and this project actually started in 2004), people weren't in a particularly happy headspace at the time. But even with that context in mind, it's hard to really look at this and feel like it's really saying anything specific to the time beyond 'Boy, humanity sucks, am I right?'
Which, again, raises the question of why go to all the trouble of so completely remaking it if you're really not going to have a clear vision of where you want to go with it. As it is, this movie has threads that could have made for interesting exploration, but never really feels like it does much more than chew them over for a little while and never really come a single conclusion about them.
I would be more likely to forgive a lot of this if the movie still worked as a thriller. Sadly, it's in that sort of nexus of a movie that manages to be both underwhelming and technically overproduced (at the same time, so I don't even have that to take solace in here.
There has been talk since about offering another take on the series – and honestly, I stand by what I said in earlier writeups, there is still pretty fertile ground for this concept to take root in (no pun intended.)
This time it just didn't take is all.
Well, we'll see what happens if that new one comes.
Until then.
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