The Invasion

Posted by Nathan Deen (nathan@filmschoolrejects.com) on August 18, 2007

The Invasion, the fourth film based on the novel “The Body Snatchers” by Jack Finney, is underrated. It’s hard for me to see why so many are disliking this movie. Sure, it’s not perfect, but I did find it to be one of the more entertaining pictures of the summer and one of the year’s best thrillers.

This is one of two films in 2007 pairing Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig together, the other being this winter’s fantasy epic The Golden Compass. The performances by the two leads are best described as fair and don’t really stand out. It’s every other character in the film, including the extras, who are possessed that are so good they really give you chills.

The screenplay to The Invasion can be described as cluttered, but also tight. It jumps right into things with a quick beginning and just as easily jumps out with a quick ending. But just about everything in between is mostly well-written and gripping. Although there are a couple of hints of just plain silliness in the film that are made even worse with poor editing.

The film opens with news coverage of a space shuttle explosion and its debris has fallen all over the United States from Texas to Washington D.C. The debris is covered in an alien virus that assumes control of the victim after he or she has fallen asleep. Tucker Kaufman (Jeremy Northam, Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius), head of what I assume is a health organization known as CDC is one of the first victims. After he has been taken control of, he sets up a conspiracy to infect millions by creating a lie about a deadly flu virus being spread throughout the country and demanding that the entire population get an immunization shot he has developed as soon as possible. But the shot will really infect the population with the alien virus.

Our main character is Kaufman’s ex-wife, a New York psychiatrist named Carol Bennell (Kidman). She is beloved by her son, Oliver, who happens to be spending a couple days with his possessed father. But here’s the kicker, it is possible that Oliver could be immune to the alien virus and thus could provide a cure to tens of millions who have been infected. With the city of New York, and the country, being thrown into a state of chaos, it’s up to Carol and her boyfriend Ben Driscoll (Craig) to get Oliver away from the infected and to a secured military research facility.

The only glimpses we really get of what the worldwide effect of this situation is is through news coverage. The film mostly sticks to the character of Carol and her need of rescuing her son. The 93-minute running time of The Invasion is really like the middle of an unfinished script. Yeah, those 93-minutes are exciting but the movie is lacking a detailed setup and a detailed conclusion.

The biggest and most important thing The Invasion does well though, is thrill. There are some truly frightening moments and there are moments that are most likely inspired by the semi-zombie thriller 28 Days Later. I won’t say ripped off because the story is based on a novel written sixty years ago. With the exception of a couple of scenes, the movie is well edited with some sequences inspired by The Matrix, cutting back and forth between dialogue and action. I won’t say ripped off because The Invasion is using the same producers. It’s really director Oliver Hirschbiegel and cinematographer Rainer Klausmann who do truly great work in capturing the emotionless facial expressions of the infected, which gave me goosebumps.

There are some messages and insight to be drawn from The Invasion. It can be argued, by making several references to the war in Iraq, that the movie is anti-war propaganda. Something deeper the movie is trying to say is what it is to be human and how the society we’ve built reflects upon us being human. One of the infected says to us that they are trying to create a world without war or murder or rape or even disease. And supporting player Jeffrey Wright (who supported Craig in Casino Royale) states that “for better or for worse we are human again.” Humans make mistakes, machines don’t and that’s what this alien virus was trying to do to humans, make them machines. No war and no diseases sound good but would it be worth denying all the emotions and feelings that make us human. The Invasion is a unique science fiction film because by the climax you really don’t know who to root for, us or them.

Read more articles by Nathan Deen