Body Snatchers, l'invasion continue

Entertaining, but totally unnecessary and uncalled for remake of the classic 1956 movie makes the fatal mistake of moving the action to a military base which has fallen victim to pods that kill everyone in site and replace them with cold emotionless replacements. Very unmemorable fare with an appealing cast and decent visual effects.

Rated R; Nudity, Violence, and Profanity.

The EPA sends Steve Malone (Terry Kinney) to a military base in Alabama for a month. He brings along his daughter Marti (Gabrielle Anwar), his second wife Carol (Meg Tilly) and their son Andy. Marti is scared by a soldier who tells her that "They get you when you sleep". She befriends base commander (R. Lee Ermey)'s wild daughter Jenn Platt (Christine Elise). She falls for chopper pilot Tim Young (Billy Wirth). There are strange things happening and Maj. Collins (Forest Whitaker) asks Steve if it could be chemical toxins. Military personnel delivers mysterious boxes to the Malones. Carol is the first to turn.

The major drawback is that the premise is known to everybody. There is no surprises except for the sci-fi uninitiated. The bathtub scene is pretty good although it's nothing shocking. This is a solid execution. The army base location is pretty good. Body snatchers can be camouflaged by being stoic soldiers and they are pretty creepy. There is nothing wrong with this version but it adds nothing new to the idea.

Normally, I try never to watch any remakes before I had the chance to see the originals...So, watching this movie really was an exception for me since I never saw Don Siegel's version from 1956 and neither did I had the chance so far to catch the Philip Kaufman remake from 1978 starring Donald Sutherland. But this movie came on TV the other night and I watched it anyway. Besides, there were a few very interesting and respected people involved in this production. First of all, there's director Abel Ferrara of course. He already delivered a few true masterpieces before and some of them are personal favorites of mine ( like Driller Killer, Bad Lieutenant and The Addiction ). But I wasn't completely convinced about watching this movie before I noticed that both Larry Cohen and Stuart Gordon took part in writing the screenplay. All three are very talented and influential men in the field of horror and I figured a collaboration between the three of them could only lead to something good.

Well, it certainly is a decent movie and it provides the viewers with several scares. But - in general - I have to admit that I expected a bit more of it. The whole movie looks "unfinished" from time to time and the basic plot-idea isn't explained well enough, I think. I also had the feeling that everything moved too quick...Body Snatchers only lasts 87 minutes and that's a bit short for a rather complicated story like this. I would have preferred it to be a little longer and more detailed. Because of the fast storytelling, the ending also looks really fake and too abrupt. That was my biggest disappointment about it, I guess. Nevertheless, Body Snatchers contains multiple memorable scenes and it actually has the ability to raise the hair on your arms...That's quite an achievement too, I may say. Especially the sequence where both the daughter ( an adorable Gabrielle Anwar ) and the father ( a terribly boring Terry Kinney ) are being "body-snatched" is really frightening and a beautiful example of suspense-cinema and building up a tight atmosphere. This terrific scene ends with a powerful monologue by Meg Tilly's character. The entire movie is in fact recommended if it were only for this scene !!

The further cast of Body Snatchers also contains a washed up Beverly Hills star ( whose name I don't remember ) and very enjoyable little roles by first class actors like Forest Whitaker and R. Lee Ermey. I guess this last one is doomed to play the authority figure ever since his outstanding performance in Full Metal Jacket but what the heck. He's brilliant every single time. In conclusion, Body Snatchers contains a few very bloody and explicit sequences so horror fans won't be disappointed completely. It could have been a lot better, that's a fact. But on the other hand..it could have been a lot worse as well.

The Malone family move to a military base to help contain a toxic spill. Many of the soldiers and families are behaving strangely but is it the toxins or something more sinister?

I'm not a fan of remakes, many try to just copy the success of other films while some lift the original scene for scene to poor effect. However this at least tries to do something slightly different with it by setting it in a military base and bringing the drama into the family setting. In fact this setting creates some of the best scenes – my favourite being where Carol tells her daughter Marti that `there's no one like you left'. The greater effects are good but really I preferred the paranoid tension of the 50's original rather than the horror of effects.

However I still think this is a very workable horror from a good director. Of course it suffers with comparison with the original – that's because the original is a sci-fi classic. But as it's own film it is pretty good. Indeed the ending is what director Siegel intended – but he was forced into having a more hopeful epilogue ending. Naturally it has it's weaknesses – the effects overpower the story at times but really I found this to be enjoyable as a horror.

The cast are one of the weak links. I love Kinney because I'm a big Oz (HBO) fan, but here he doesn't really make a mark. Tilly has all the good lines and she is actually quite good. Anwar is also very watchable. But Ermey is type cast in his usual military role and Whitaker is far too calm and reasoned to do the job – he needed to be more like McCarthy in the original.

Overall, this should be watched and not compared. In it's own right it is a good horror with only a few weaknesses that spoil it slightly. And if you do want to compare it to the 50's version then please remember than this is the type of ending that Siegel wanted and to me is one of the strengths of this film.

Okay, the 1956 original paved the way and has to get the credit for that, but from an objective point-of-view, both the 1978 and this 1993 remake are better, scarier, more developed. In comparison to the second version, this one has a nowhere nearly as brilliant, rather disappointing ending, but the pacing is must faster. Abel Ferrara keeps the movie running for only a tight 85 minutes, and pushes all the right buttons along the way; the horror ranges from the gory (the melting heads) to the supremely subtle (the scene in the classroom, where all the kids draw the exact same picture, except for one, who naturally realizes that something is wrong - the teacher seems to want to punish him for being different). This is a spine-chilling, absolutely terrific little picture - but even if it wasn't, it would still be worth seeing just for Meg Tilly's exceptional performance - her "where are you gonna go?" monologue is as scary as anything in say, "Psycho" or "Rosemary's Baby". (***1/2)