Invasion, The

Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig star in this version of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers from the director of Downfall
The Invasion endured a notoriously troubled production, it received a scathing response from critics in the US, and in the UK there was not a sniff of a press preview - always an indication a studio isn't happy with a film. Surprisingly, it's an okay piece of Hollywood entertainment - until you reach the finale and the film makes that blunder most famously exemplified by the Hollywood remake of The Vanishing. Yes, The Invasion gives Invasion Of The Body Snatchers a happy ending. Jack Finney's 1955 novel had a happy ending, and Don Siegel's 1956 Cold War version carried one because the studio forced it on it him. It was Philip Kaufman's 1978 Watergate/Vietnam era version that finally scrapped the cosy climax, giving rise to a considerably more powerful conclusion. The next adaptation by Abel Ferrara (1993) sensibly stuck with this alteration - a change that gave the notion of plant-based alien life replacing friends and neighbours with emotionless duplicates extra oomph, shaping it into one of science fiction cinema's most abiding exercises in unease, a wonderfully paranoid twentieth century equivalent of the vampire myth. Here screenwriter Dave Kajganich's take on the aliens is more akin to that of The Thing (another profoundly scary SF film), with a sentient spore that infects the blood and is passed, Aids-like, in bodily fluids. That's fine, and the screenwriter isn't to blame for the ending. Nor, most likely, is Oliver Hirschbiegel, the German director of The Experiment and Downfall making an unhappy Hollywood debut. Hirschbiegel's low-key version of the film was shot in the autumn of 2005, but was deemed unsatisfactory by Warners, who hired Matrix-creators the Wachowski brothers and their collaborator James McTeigue (V For Vendetta) to sex it up. Reshoots took place in early 2007. As well as being responsible for some car chases which are more yawn-inducing rather than thrilling, it's this studio interference that seems to have resulted in the happy ending, which undermines any strength the film built up in its previous 98 minutes. Still, those 98 minutes have their moments, and The Invasion gives Nicole Kidman a better role than she's had in other lame remakes such as The Stepford Wives and Bewitched. She plays Carol Bennell, a psychiatrist who starts noticing people around her behaving strangely. There's talk of "that bug that's been going around" and a "dangerous flu virus," but in fact it's a nasty alien spore entity that hitched a ride on a Space Shuttle, which broke up on re-entry, scattering contaminated debris over a huge swathe of the US. Government man and Carol's ex Tucker Kaufman (Northam) is among the first transformed. "Something's wrong with my dad," says Carol and Tucker's offspring Ollie (Bond). "Yeah, mine too," replies a friend. The infection is spreading fast. Can Carol, her almost-boyfriend Dr Ben Driscoll (Craig) and his smart colleague Dr Stephen Galeano (Wright) save the human race after Galeano confirms their worst fears with this mouthful of exposition?: "What we're dealing with is a complete intelligent entity with the dimensions of only a few cells, that's invading people's bodies, integrating their DNA and reprogramming their genetic expression overnight." Well, can they? It looks extremely unlikely, as all around, the US turns into an alien nation. People are mellow after they have had their flu jab. They take a nap and then wake up part of the spore collective. Apart from the whole mass body hijacking thing, they're so mellow that the war in Iraq starts to subside. Yes, this is a sort-of political film, but it's a muddled one, with numerous news reports and mentions of the Iraq war, Darfur and New Orleans trying to make some sort of point about how the human race is really rather rubbish. One of our heroes, after getting transformed, says "Have you seen what we're offering? A world without war, without poverty, without murder, without rape. A world without suffering. Because in our world, no one can hurt each other, or exploit each other or try to destroy each other - because in our world there is no other. You know it's right. Deep down inside you know that fighting us is fighting for all the wrong things. Carol - you know it's true, our world is a better world." What point is being made? The film objects to the aliens' peaceful status quo, which indicates sheep-like compliance, and seems to fight for the right to be violent, murderous bastards. Maybe the message got lost in the tacked-on car chases, gun fights and happy ending.
Verdict
The first Hollywood film to carry the name of significant German director Hirschbiegel is a bodged, botched update of a classic story.