The Invasion (2007)

The Invasion Review

Oliver Hirschbiegel's troubled remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" was reputedly partly reshot by the Wachowski Brothers after a first cut failed to please the studio suits. Sadly, what remains is a badly edited, poorly written mess, though occasionally you catch a glimpse of the decent movie it could have been. Nicole Kidman plays psychiatrist Carol Bennell, who realises that the earth is being invaded by alien body-snatchers. To complicate matters, her ex-husband, Disease Control honcho Kaufman (Jeremy Northam), was one of the first to be infected and is now leading the invasion. Worse still, Kaufman has temporary custody of their young son (Jackson Bond), so Carol and her boyfriend (Daniel Craig) frantically try to get him back while trying not to get vomited on by aliens (the method of infection) in the process.

The most interesting element of "The Invasion" basically happens in the background, since the alien invasion paradoxically leads to world peace - we get several shots of TV reports announcing ceasefires all over the world. Some of the characters do get to point out the irony right at the end, but the film refuses to delve any deeper than that.

Kidman is fine as Carol, though it's often hard to tell the difference between the scenes where she's pretending to be an emotionless alien and the scenes where she isn't. That said, Northam is excellent as Tucker and Craig is fine in the thankless boyfriend role.

However, the film's biggest problem is the editing, which is shockingly bad in places, with characters inexplicably changing locations and even a flashback to something that we haven't actually seen. Similarly, the trite script is laughably bad in places.

Basically, this is just about watchable but it's still a huge disappointment compared to the film it could have been.