HTF BLU-RAY REVIEW: The Invasion

It’s not impossible to do a first class remake of a film (Hitchcock remade his own The Man Who Knew Too Much with great success; The Maltese Falcon certainly superseded its previous two incarnations), but the odds are decidedly against the third remake of a classic movie being able to pull it off. Oliver Hirschbiegel’s The Invasion, the latest stab at adapting Jack Finney’s classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers story, gets some things very right: a smashing new set-up for the invasion, an incredible cast of talented actors, a tight pace. But when it goes wrong, it goes very wrong, quashing tension and leaving the viewer with a distinct sense of being letdown followed by one of the most ignominious wrap-ups in recent film history.

Nicole Kidman stars as Dr. Carol Bennell, a psychiatrist who has a patient (Veronica Cartwright who co-starred in the 1978 remake) that claims her husband isn’t her husband any more. Doing some investigating of a strange gelatinous substance that seems alive having been brought to earth on a disintegrating space shuttle, she, along with scientists Ben Driscoll (Daniel Craig) and Stephen Galeano (Jeffrey Wright), determines the substance is infecting humans by draining them of their humanity and making them in fact a zombie-like extension of an overpowering alien organism. Bennell’s ex-husband (Jeremy Northam) is already infected, and he has her son (Jackson Bond) with him, so the race is on to rescue her child from becoming infected while trying to maintain her own shaky hold on her humanity after her husband begins the transformation process on her.

The first half of the film flies at a breakneck pace as discoveries pile on top of one another, each more horrifying than the last. Director Oliver Hirschbiegel does stage the early revelations concisely and manages a terrifically scary scene with Kidman trying to politely deal with a census taker who has very odd office hours. As David Kajganich’s script becomes more haphazard and less fully fleshed out, however, Hirschbiegel’s direction likewise gets sloppy with some bad staging moments (talk around a dinner party table is lifelessly staged in spite of the ominous portents that are being spoken, and endless chases down alleys and through service passageways become repetitive after a time). Worst of all, the film’s ending is a stunningly inept piece of writing as if Kajganich simply tired of the entire project and wanted to end it as quickly as possible. It gives new meaning to the word “anticlimactic.”

I was really pleased with the array of talent lined up for these roles. Kidman played the crafty but terrified card to perfection in The Others some years ago, and her performance here is equally intense even with lesser material. Daniel Craig isn’t given many opportunities to shine even with his second billing. Better is Jeremy Northam as Kidman’s ex-husband especially in one memorable scene when he’s intent on infecting her. Veronica Cartwright steals every scene she’s in as the confused and frightened patient while Jackson Bond gains easy audience sympathy as the little boy no one in the audience wants to see turned. Also popping up to good if brief effect are Josef Somer, Celia Weston, and Roger Rees.




The film’s 1.85:1 original aspect ratio is reproduced here in 1080p using the VC-1 codec. Much of the movie’s presentation is exemplary with razor sharpness, excellent color (with very true flesh tones), and contrast that is right on the money. Occasionally, however, lighting of certain scenes causes the image to completely flatten out with milky contrast and substantial loss of color tones. Otherwise, though, blacks are good as is shadow detail. The film has been divided into 27 chapters.



The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack is active at all the right moments and creates a grand sense of gradually increasing tension through inventive use of split surround effects (especially the use of voices at varying volume levels in various channels closing in) and music that punctuates many of the shock moments.




All of the bonus features are presented in 1080i.

“The Invasion: A New Story” is the first of three brief featurettes on the disc. In this 3-minute overview, the director, producer Joel Silver, and several of the stars comment on their parts in this new version of the famous tale.

“The Invasion: On the Set” discusses the film’s location shooting in Washington, D.C., the first time the story has been set in that city. The actors mention specifically how much fun they had doing the work on location. This too-brief vignette runs 3½ minutes.

“The Invasion: Snatched” is another far too brief discussion of the special effects and stunt work used in the movie. This runs 3¼ minutes.

“We’ve Been Snatched Before: Invasion in Media History” is the most substantial item in the bonus package. It’s a 19-minute discussion of the use of subtext in delineating the aliens in three of the versions of the story. While the 1956 original suggested the Red Scare as the creeping terror inching up on us, the 1978 version turned its intimations to cults that were snatching away potential victims seemingly overnight. This 2007 version suggests that terrorism and also the rise of infectious diseases are the two most visible “aliens” in today’s culture. A number of doctors and scientists give testimony in their views of the threat of these infectious microbes.




The Invasion is not a patch on the brilliant original 1956 version or the creepy and haunting 1978 remake. There are some thrills to be had and some good performances to be seen, but this could and should have been so much better.


Matt Hough
Charlotte, NC

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Re: HTF BLU-RAY REVIEW: The Invasion

The biggest problem with this movie is that...


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That said, this was a technicially exceptional disc for a woefully underwhelming movie.

Re: HTF BLU-RAY REVIEW: The Invasion

Especially an ending that is so lackadaisically tacked onto the end of the story.

Re: HTF BLU-RAY REVIEW: The Invasion

'78 version with Donald Sutherland is still the best.