Your Friendly Neighborhood Imposters

Can you imagine falling asleep and waking up devoid of feeling? Invasion of the Body Snatchers is an enduring Sci-Fi, horror classic that has been remade four times. It's most popular remake is the version by the same name produced in 1978 starring Donald Sutherland. A lesser known remake was made in 2007 called only The Invasion starring Nicole Kidman and approaching the story with a more modern take on the pod people. Here I examine both films and look at why one is so cherished and the other overlooked.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

For Those Who Haven't Seen This Masterpiece

Frantic and afraid, Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) tells his story to a psychiatrist at a hospital. In the flashback, he returns from a long trip to find that people in his small town are suddenly claiming their friends and relatives are different. His high school sweetheart Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter) comes by his practice to tell him that her friend feels the same way about her uncle. After catching up with Becky, Miles decides to finish up at work and then see Becky’s friend, but his examination of the man reveals nothing odd. Miles and Becky decide to get dinner together and run into the town’s psychiatrist, Dr. Dan Kauffman (Larry Gates) who tells them there is a mass hysteria going around where everyone is experiencing similar situations. Miles and Becky’s date is interrupted by a call and the two go to the home of Jack (King Donovan) and Theodora “Teddy” (Carolyn Jones) Belicec. They find a body on their pool table without any defining details or even fingerprints. Miles tells them to stay up with the body and to call him, not the police, if anything happens, then he and Becky leave. In the middle of the night, Teddy notices the body’s eyes have opened and it looks exactly like Jack. They flee to Miles’ house who then leaves to check on Becky at her home. He finds a copy of her forming in the basement and takes her back to his home. They call Kauffman and Jack and Miles take him to see the body on the pool table and Becky’s double only to find they’re both gone. The next morning, Miles finds more people in town who feared their relatives were not themselves now feel it was nothing. Upon returning home to Becky, Jack, and Teddy, he finds giant pods in the garden spewing out bodies that looked just like each of them. Jack and Teddy try to leave town for help while Miles tries to call the FBI. When he cannot get through, he and Becky take refuge overnight in his office. In the morning, they see trucks of pods come into town to be distributed. Jack and Kauffman come to the office only they have, too, been changed. They say the change will render a person content but emotionless and that it happens when you sleep. Miles and Becky subdue them and escape, walking among the pod people without emotion to blend in. They are eventually discovered and flee into an abandoned mine. The two are exhausted. They hear people over the hill and Miles goes to check. When he returns, he finds Becky has fallen asleep and been changed and Miles flees to a nearby town. The flashback ends. Initially skeptical, the psychiatrist overhears that strange pods were found coming from Miles’ town and suddenly believes him, calling the police for help.

The Preservation of the Pod People

Director Dan Siegel tried to downplay the film’s portrayal of McCarthyism and communism as much as possible but knows it was impossible not to notice the similarities. It was declared “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” in 1994 and was preserved in the Library of Congress in the United States National Film Registry. The film was originally supposed to be much funnier but much of it was cut because the film was difficult to follow, and test audiences laughed at all the wrong moments. Kevin McCarthy briefly reprises his role in the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

A Multifaceted Allegory for 1950's America

When one thinks of the historical significance of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, what comes to mind is its strong references to McCarthyism and the fear that they would come for you if you were suspected to not be one of them. On the flip side is the Red Scare, and the fear that someone you know may secretly be one of them. These were both real fears in the 1950s, and it is nearly impossible not to draw these parallels in the film, though director Siegel tried his best to downplay them. But there is another, often overlooked aspect to the film and it can be seen in the relationship between Becky and Miles.

As well as McCarthyism in the '50s, many women were living in a kind of in-between with their independence. The second-wave feminism of the 1960s had not yet hit but many women during WWII had taken over all kinds of work in the US and experienced newfound autonomy. This is subtly reflected in Becky’s background; after being away from her hometown for so long, she finally returns, now divorced. She’s flirtatious and asserts her limits. She spends the night at Miles’ house after he finds her double growing in her basement, whether in his bed or not, we can infer but never know. She keeps him at arm’s length at first, and even when she does embrace him, she says, in a positive way, how it’s happening suddenly. She’s been through heartbreak and divorce before and tries to keep her feelings for the doctor from betraying her judgments.

However, Becky still hasn’t fully escaped the expectations of being a housewife. In the same scene, she’s woken up well before Miles and has breakfast ready, not just for him but the whole house. She used to do the same for her husband and asks Miles, “didn’t your wife used to do this for you?” As if in being a wife, that was a given duty to uphold. The orchestra swells warmly, in much the same way it did in her first scene likening her beauty as something next to homemaking while downplaying her independence.

Miles, too, reacts to her balance between breaking from the mold and conforming to it. He jokingly calls her a “forward wench” while she asks for him to come into her home with her. He, also, neglects to see just how capable Becky is. In the scene where he’s trying to figure out how to escape the pod people who have trapped them in his office, he says there’s “three against one.” Becky stands there as if to say, “what am I chopped liver?” and tells him that she can help, that it’s two against three, a more even fight. After the war, women were expected to resume their roles in the house without so much as a thank you for keeping the country afloat. They were not recognized for doing the same jobs that men had been doing for decades. Becky takes this moment to remind Miles that when it comes down to the wire, she can do exactly what he can.

With all this, it is easy to overlook the effects that add to the film’s atmosphere. McCarthy does a lot of running in the film and Siegel does his best to keep those scenes from getting monotonous. The use of the town’s klaxon while Miles and Becky escape adds more tension and urgency than any orchestra could. The most harrowing reveal of the film is arguably when Miles, Becky, Teddy, and Jack’s doubles are seen emerging from their pods. The prop bodies look so much like the actors it’s uncanny, and the popping noises and bubbles are truly sickening.

Overall, the Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a robust piece of cinema. If you are looking for horror, you will find it here. If you are looking for realistic effects, you will find them here. If you are looking for a strong message, you will find it here. After all, there is a reason the classics become classics in the first place.

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The Invasion (2007)

A Perfect World? Far From It

A space shuttle crashes and explodes coming down to earth, sending its debris all over the west coast of the U.S. CDC director Tucker Kaufman arrives at one of the crash sites where he is informed that there is a fungus on the debris that takes over its host while in REM sleep. Tucker is handed a scrap from the wreckage and it cuts his finger infecting him. Tucker’s ex-wife and psychiatrist, Carol Bennell (Nicole Kidman) gets to work and learns that her first appointment is early. Her patient, Wendy Lenk (Veronica Cartwright) feels her husband has changed and is no longer her husband. Later, while trick-or-treating with her son Oliver (Jackson Bond) and his friends, she notices that one friend is behaving detached and emotionless and finds a strange patch of flesh in her son’s treat bag. She takes the flesh to her friend Ben Driscoll (Daniel Craig) for testing as she believes it might be connected to the fast-spreading flu that has been going around. That night, she leaves Oliver with his father and goes to a party with Ben. There they meet Russian and Czech diplomats Yorish (Roger Rees) and Belicec (Josef Sommer). Yorish debates the violent nature of mankind with Carol. Meanwhile, Tucker is spreading the spore using a fake flu vaccine to infect people. The next day, Ben and his colleague Galeano (Jeffrey Wright) examine the piece of flesh, learning its connection to REM sleep and that those with past brain-affecting illnesses are immune. Belicec’s wife Luddie (Celia Weston) calls Ben, worried something is wrong with Yorish. He’s contracted the spore and dies from cardiac arrest after being woken. Carol realizes her son had a brain-affecting illness and is immune, so she leaves to get him. When she arrives at Tucker’s house, he vomits on her, infecting her. She escapes back to the Belicec house where Belicec returns, also turned. Ben, Carol, and Galeano escape and Galeano heads for Fort Detrick where people are working on a cure. Oliver texts his location to his mother and she manages to rescue him but kills Tucker in the process. The two take refuge in an abandoned pharmacy where Carol falls asleep waiting for Ben to find them. Oliver gives her a shot of adrenaline to wake her, stopping the change. When Ben arrives, Carol finds he has been changed. She and Oliver are picked up by Galeano and taken back to Fort Detrick. A cure is soon made and distributed to the infected and the world returns to normal—violent and emotional.

Driving Scenes Are More Dangerous Than You'd Think

The making of this film was riddled with accidents. First, when Kidman had parked a car for a particular scene, she neglected to actually put it in park. It began to roll down a hill. Luckily, Craig was able to jump into the passenger seat and engage the parking brake before it crashed. Later, during a driving scene, the truck Kidman was in slid on wet pavement and crashed. Several were injured and while Kidman was taken to the hospital for safety concerns, she was able to resume filming the next day. The film was initially completed in 2006 as the studio did not like the cut director Oliver Hirschbeigel delivered. The Wachowski’s were brought in to do the rewrite and James McTeigue directed the new scenes though both remain uncredited.

Overwhelming Sequences, Underwhelming Message

Eerily relevant to the times we are experiencing today, The Invasion begins with news reports of a new flu-like infection sweeping America. Of course, this infection comes from outer space. The infected spread their disease by vomiting on others. Seems the people of this story could have benefited from a little social distancing.*

The film also hints at an interconnected consciousness shared by the infected, but this is constantly disproven. Ben tells Carol after becoming one of them that he is now more than just Ben. Possibly he's now connected to the rest of the pod people. If this were true, the pod people would be able to distinguish regular humans immediately. As we find out it's easy enough to fool them just by acting without emotion. It would be interesting to see the same type of movie with the Organism being a hive mind; it would become an even greater threat if they were not just individually united but all one.

There are several sequences in the film but only one of which serves its purpose. The very first scene Shows Carol frantically searching through a pharmacy trying to stay awake. Her panic, disorientation, and lack of sleep work well with the jumbled sequence. However later sequences failed to deliver the same effect. When she was talking to her ex-husband Tucker over the phone regarding custody of Oliver it skips back and forth between the present and whenever that happened leading us to be confused as to when it took place and if that's even happening later that day. Another sequence does roughly the same thing; as she and Ben try to escape the city it skips back and forth between their conversation and their actual escape. Again, it clashes going from their more intimate emotional scene to a scene that is action-packed and dangerous.

The message of the film is said by the Russian ambassador, that “civility hides our true self-intent” and that everyone is capable of terrible things in the right circumstances. While the stated message is painfully obvious it is never cleanly depicted in the rest of the film. Has the organism proved or disproved this theory? It makes the infected civil and the intent is to infect everyone but there’s nothing beyond that. It wants to infect everyone because once everyone is infected it can… blank. Carol shoots people in the pharmacy to protect her child, but that’s something any parent would do if their child were in harm's way. She even goes so far as to only incapacitate Ben so that they might escape.

The film’s ending is a somber one despite the convoluted message. The world has returned to it’s normal, emotional, and violent self and the infected have been cured. The fact that Ben has lost all memory of being infected cannot be easy for Carol and himself, but somehow, they have repaired their relationship. However, she remembers his threats and intent, and she remembers shooting him and he gets to remain blissfully unaware. It is evident it bothers her, and surely, she questions how much she can still trust him and how much she can trust herself.

*I would also like to point out that this is just an inaccurate portrayal of a

pandemic; the pharmacy clearly still had toilet paper.

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A Squandered Opportunity

Being filmed half a century apart, one can expect some fundamental differences to be present in both stories. However, those fifty years should bring with them a plethora of opportunities for new ways to express ideas and emotions in the film. Unfortunately, The Invasion misses the mark; it is not frightening or shocking as the original was, nor does it contain any real meaning.

The Invasion lacks one of the fundamental concepts that made the original The Invasion of the Body Snatchers so enduring: cultural relevance. Though it toys with the idea of “what humans can be capable of” and what they hide beneath a mask of civility, that message never comes to fruition. It is no match for the real fear and paranoia that people were experiencing in the 1950s, wondering if neighbors may secretly be a Russian spy and who would be accused next. A general message can add so much to a film, but the 2007 film fails to be consistent in its telling.

In this modern interpretation, the “pod people” can now be considered the “spore people” or maybe the “vomit people.” Where before a person needs only to fall asleep near a pod to be absorbed, in The Invasion, the organism is transmitted like the flu. On one hand, this eliminates a few continuity issues with the pods, mostly with how the pods could copy someone without having contact with them. This also introduces the ability to cure the person and for people with the right preexisting condition to be immune.

Unfortunately for Hirschbiegel, the concept of an evil doppelganger is simply more frightening than a spore. Those infected with the spore were just everyday people under its control. The pod people were not; they were invaders. A person’s loved one would be gone forever once they were absorbed by the pod. The idea that family and friends would become impostors carries with it more finality that saying someone is only sick and can be cured.

The infected are also now incredibly easy to spot. They are stiff and robotic while the pod people of 1956 merely seem a bit casual and detached. Miles was unable to distinguish at first glance that multiple people had been changed. It was only noticeable by close friends or relatives who could merely say that the person in question was now colder in demeanor. In The Invasion, Carol sees almost immediately when she meets her patient’s husband for the first time. While she does not know about the spore at the time and ultimately attributes his behavior to an abusive relationship, she is still able to discern that this stranger is behaving abnormally. After all, people do not refer to others by both their first and last names.

Even amid the pandemic the world is experiencing today, it still fails to appeal, and that is not just because we are now experts at social distancing. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is layered in meaning from representing McCarthyism to depicting the changing social norms for women; by comparison, The Invasion is devoid of any. The shame is that it had the potential to either become just as relevant or become just as frightening for modern standards. With Kidman as the leading actress and Daniel Craig as a supporting role along with a substantial budget and reshoot, the film was given every opportunity to be more than it was. I would say, if you are looking for a good remake, try the one from ’78.

Edited by Miles Ericksen