The Invasion Movie
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Storyline
TAGLINES
Do not trust anyone. Do not show emotion. Do not fall asleep.
Don't Sleep. Don't Go Home. I'll Find You. - Mom
A mysterious epidemic is sweeping the world, but it takes one Washington DC psychiatrist to discover that the disease is extraterrestrial in origin. When her son becomes infected, she and a colleague must work together to find a cure, before the entire world is lost...
| Nicole Kidman | Carol Bennell |
| Daniel Craig | Ben Driscoll |
| Jeremy Northam | Tucker Kaufman |
| Jackson Bond | Oliver |
| Jeffrey Wright | Dr. Stephen Galeano |
| Veronica Cartwright | Wendy Lenk |
| Josef Sommer | Dr. Henryk Belicec |
| Celia Weston | Ludmilla Belicec |
| Roger Rees | Yorish |
| Eric Benjamin | Gene |
| Susan Floyd | Pam |
| Stephanie Berry | Carly |
| Alexis Raben | Belicec's Aide |
| Adam LeFevre | Richard Lenk |
| Joanna Merlin | Joan Kaufman |
| Oliver Hirschbiegel |
6.00 out of 10 (4616 votes)
Visitor Reviews
Guilty pleasure of the year!
posted on 26 Aug 2009I had heard nothing but bad comments by people about The Invasion when I went to see it. In fact the paper review I read this morning condemned it as laughable, poorly made, and just pitiful in general. So you can forgive me for feeling a little sceptical as I lined up to see the movie. The omens were all there, release delayed, actors refusing to promote the movie, two directors, a remake, flopped in America. In fact the movie looked destined to be hated. My first surprise of the day has to be when I walked into the screen and found it pretty nearly full, and my second surprise happened as I walked out of the movie and realised I actually had really enjoyed the movie quite a lot. In fact the movies reception has now really irritated me, the movie is not bad at all, sure its not perfect and there are a lot of flaws, but in terms of entertainment this is pretty solid. Okay I'll be honest and admit that the movie has problems, the script at times is clunky and you can tell there were two directors as the movie seems to have tow very different halves. However, the storyline remains perfectly intact and still has the ability to make you think Nicole Kidman is not wooden as critics has said she is, the action is very good and fast paced, and the movie never feels slow or dull. The Invasion has to be my guilty pleasure of the year as I am partly ashamed to like it quite as much as I do, and actually if I was honest this gets a pretty high 7/10 rating, but am aware I will scrutinised if I give it much higher. Truthfully I have no idea why this is hated as much as it is, and I really don't understand why it bombed as badly as it did in America. Perhaps the idiot critics or poor marketing caused a huge problem for the movie. But I would highly recommend the movie so long as you go in aware that it is essentially a piece of dumb entertainment.Nicole Kidman has come under a lot of scrutiny by the critics for her allegedly wooden performance. I actually found her performance to be pretty good, sure the odd bit of clunky dialogue makes her performance seem pretty bad, but look at the smaller moments, especially the moments she is among the infected, and you notice that she is delivering a very noteworthy performance. The scenes that she shares with Daniel Craig are actually quite touching, especially one moment where she reveals something to Craig. You actually care very much for her character and you are constantly rooting for her, this is a good thing as I have seen many movies recently where I want the lead character to drop down dead at the first opportunity. Daniel Craig, in his before Bond mode, delivers a pretty good performance, a shame that for a majority of the movie he has little to do. Thankfuly as the movie wears on he gets better bits to do and has one very impressive scene towards the end. He also has a good amount of chemistry with Nicole Kidman which makes me hope that the pair star together in a movie again at some point. From here on though the cast is a bit superfluous, Jeffrey Wright delivers a mediocre performance in a pretty pointless role, while Jackson Bond pretty much ticks all the right boxes for cute kid, although at times he is a little too cute and happy given the situation he is actually in.The critics have also condemned the pacing and way the movie is executed. This actually baffles me as I found the movie went by very quickly and never left me bored at all. The beginning delivers just the right amount of set up without ever letting the audience get bored, the middle section draws the audience in, and the final third just has the audience on the edge of your seat before they deliver an ending which actually does get you thinking quite a bit. The pacing is actually one of the best bits of the movie so unfortunately its just another example of the critics nit-picking. The execution of the movie is admittedly something I have a bit of a fault with. There were two directors for this movie, the first of the directors obviously being the better one at making this movie. The nice execution at the start of the movie shows the first director was more than capable, unfortunately the second director chooses to have loads and loads of jumpy cuts. Its the mixture of two directors that leaves us with some bizarre editing that switches between time in seconds. One minute its night, then its day, Carols' at work, then she takes her kid to school, the she is at work again. It gets less noticeable as the movie wears on but for me it was distracting at first. The script also makes the movie a bit faulty. Daniel Craig explanation of the virus has to be one of the funniest things I've seen all year, I honestly did not understand a damn word of that scene and nor did my friend who just burst out laughing in the scene. Thankfuly that is the worst bit of the movie and there are lines that are pretty good. Overall The Invasion is a pretty good and quite memorable movie. In many ways its this years Poseidon, slaughtered by the critics, not seen by masses of people and unfortunately regarded as a failure. Luckily for me I am one of the few people who can see why this movie should be watched and hopefully, in years to come, this movie may find the audience it does deserve.
Why are so many reviewers giving this an R rating?
posted on 22 Aug 2009I saw Invasion this afternoon, and I think I was the only one in the theater. It's not a bad movie, yet it's not a good one either. It has it's moments, yet you can clearly tell there were plenty of re-shoots and rewrites, but it was a fair movie.Now I'm not sure if indeed this was originally an R rated movie, moments in the movie looked as if that's where it was headed, yet it is PG-13. So why is every review I read or see about it says it's R rated?? even IMDb first had a PG-13 rating then it was suddenly switched to R for language? I don't understand this it makes no sense.. does anyone have any ideas??
Bloopers again
posted on 22 Aug 2009One short scene – the dinner at the Czech Ambassador's home adds greatly to my collection of funny bloopers: - Ben Driscoll (Daniel Craig), being a frequent quest of the Czechs, is supposed to know that goulash is Hungarian national dish but not Czech; - "notorious Russian ambassador" Yorish Kaganovich… where did they find such strange first name? There is NO such name in Russia. Yuri - yes. (Remember Yuri Gagarin - the first man in outerspace). And that Jew family name – highly unlikely for the Russian ambassador; - judging by the video messages Caroll Bennell (Nicole Kidman) gets from her son the movie pictures the time somewhat after the year 2005 or so but the "notorious Russian ambassador" refers to Czechoslovakia which ceased to exist in 1992, but who cares…
Studio killed the atmospheric thriller.
posted on 18 Aug 2009It's a shame to think what could have been, had the studio not wanted the film to be so commercial and therefore destroyed whatever Hirschbiegel hoped to achieve. It's clear that he had a great picture going, until they took over and crafted a final act that was almost unbearably predictable for such a unique and terrifying story. The first hour is incredible. The plot line itself is terrifying as humans are taken over by an alien being that makes them empty shells, striving for a perfect world without sin. The acting all around is pretty spectacular and nobody misses a mark by showing any emotion when it's not required.Nicole Kidman stars as Carol Bennell a woman who notices the strange things happening around her, but the government's decision to keep everything quiet and publicize this alien invasion as a simple flu leads to her not realizing what's happening until it's too late. Now, with the help of her doctor best friend Ben (Daniel Craig) she has to go and find her son (Jackson Bond) and get out of the city before they are taken over. Luckily for her, her son is also immune to the virus meaning he may also hold the means for a cure. So the race is on to find him, and Carol must pretend to have no emotion in order to trick these body snatchers. I've never been a fan of Nicole Kidman, but I must say that her performance impressed me here.Up to this point, the film is a knockout and was looking to become one of the best of the year and something that I couldn't really understand why everyone hated so much. But then she finds her son, and that's when the obvious studio takeover occurs. The rest of the film features horrendously predictable plot points and an ending that is just jaw-droppingly unreal, with some very out of place action scenes and a car chase that is laughably ridiculous. It's a shame that something so promising could turn into such a mediocre commercial thriller. Hirschbiegel also sets up some political commentaries on how the American government reacts to epidemics and how flawed this is, but that's thrown out the door as well when everything turns into explosions and fast cars.
Half of this movie on cutting room floor
posted on 14 Aug 2009I for one would have liked to see the directors cut. After watching this movie the first thing I said to my friends was that this movie has been cut and re-cut. Now after reading that the producers brought in another director then re-wrote & re-shot chunks of this movies you understand the disjointed feel of this movie. There is a flow that happens on the set of movies that gels most movies together. So often good actors pull a poor script up and we get a fairly good movie as a result. This movie before cutting was worse then this final cut? hard to believe.I will watch this if and when they have a directors cut on DVD. And the spoiler is weak ending ala 'war of the worlds'
Better than I thought it would be.
posted on 10 Aug 2009I skipped this in theaters because I heard what a disaster the final cut of this film was. However, now having seen it on DVD, I didn't think it was that bad at all. At first I wondered if the world really needed ANOTHER Body Snatchers remake, but then I thought that unlike some "in it for the money" remakes like Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, there could actually be a reason to telling this story again, updating it to our time and our world (I like that they mentioned Iraq, Darfur, and Katrina by name). The first Body Snatchers film was about the spread of Communism (or McCarthy-ism, depending on your point of view), the second was about the end of the counter-culture generation, and now this film is about our messed time. And it poses a very interesting question, "Would humans be better off if we weren't human?" Would we really be better off if we didn't have politics, religion, race, nationality, or even emotions? Sure, some of the dialogue is too on-the-nose, but I felt this new version had a very interesting theme. The execution of that theme though was a little uneven; as stated the writing is a tad too obvious, the film is watchable but never as gripping or exciting as it should be, and it's evident that this was heavily reworked in the editing room. I understand the film was taken away from the original director, and I would be most interested in seeing his cut of the film. But for now, this version serves as a sort of good but not great time filler, and actually has something a lot of remakes don't have... a point.
Doctor Bennell must face overwhelming odds in order to save her son and escape a pandemic from space...
posted on 04 Aug 2009If you have any form of individual mind when it comes to movies, then you would like the body snatchers...everyone hates it because it had a bad reputation and if you're one of those people who doesn't go and see a movie because the Review in the new york times says its bad then you might as well just get yourself a t-shirt that says 'I'm A Tool' If you actually went to see it without any biased against you would like it, if you didn't then thats OK but don't assume it sucks because some 40 year old film critic from the local news paper says its a horrible film because movies have a different effect on everyone..I think it took a creative spin on things and gave the whole storyline a new perspective. I enjoyed it because i look for suspense and actual intelligence in a movie.. I like to make my own opinion in my head after a movie is done i don't want everything spoon fed to me like most movies today are like..I am legend is one of those things where it just gave you everything straight forward and at the end you were just like..OK so the girl lives now what? It doesn't leave it open for a discussion with friends other than.."Oh yeah I am legend was Good..but the ending sucked" At the end of the body snatchers however instead of just saying that everyone lived, it made you think twice because what seemed like a good ending had a slight twist to it on whether the main character made the right decision or not.So any trolls who come here just for fun and make fun of this movie just take an hour to actually watch what you're making fun of because its really a decent movie to anyone who has an IQ above 100. It really takes a thinker to understand it fully and i know most people out there are but they just don't bother to try it...
Genuinely Creepy
posted on 31 Jul 2009This movie, above all elements of a good suspense/thriller, is amazingly creepy. The blank stares of a million citizens walking aimlessly towards nothing. The intense, determined attempts to turn every living, breathing person into one of them. Nicole Kidman, one of my favorite actresses, does a great job as the scared and desperate mother; also as a "body snatcher". Her son, is also awesome in displaying the affectionate yet wise little boy who understood the measures that had to be taken for survival. The boyfriend/best friend, did well as the "i wont let anything happen to you" guy, as he also went to extreme actions to save them. I would compare this movie to "The Others" which also stars Nicole Kidman, but this movie with much more excitement/suspense/intensity. Also one of the few horror/suspense/thriller movies that serves its purpose without little to no violence. I haven't seen the 70s version of this movie, so maybe once i do my perspective on this movie will change. But until then, i recommend this movie to sci-fi, horror, suspense and thriller fans. It falls into all those genres.
A total waste of 2 hours!
posted on 23 Jul 2009I absolutely loved the 1970's version of "Invasion". It was creepy, psychologically scary and I have never forgotten that final scene. It takes a lot to scare me (dolls that come to life and Blair Witch) but "Invasion" was one of my very favorite scares. So I was excited to go see this remake. What a TERRIBLE movie! It starts out OK with people changing and weird things happening. The kids trick or treating was a great scene where the dog attacked the "changed kid" and the kid broke the dogs snout. But the last two thirds of the movie were ridiculous. Oh Nicole's characters son just happens to be immune. Give me a break. And the last ten minutes were completely insulting. A Hollywood ending to a classic story. I have never been so disappointed but unfortunately not surprised. If you loved the 1970's version, rent it and rewatch it and don't even bother to get this one on DVD when it comes out. IT IS TERRIBLE!!!
Kinda fun
posted on 21 Jul 2009I liked the cinematography, and the editing jazzed up a few of what might have been overly talky exposition bits. Some good action scenes, more suspenseful than a thriller, or horror flick. I was scared at the original, and the remake, but aside from a couple of "gotchas" not so much here. Nicole Cheesecake alert: a couple of nice scenes of the skinny one, will she ever stop being easy on the eyes? I was concerned with the mixed message about humanity-it seemed that there was a case being made for homogeneity as being a solution to war, and other ills of mankind. There was also a lot of stilted dialog (NOT from the possessed ones) and scientific plot holes you could drive a zombie-covered BMW through-especially the end. I mean, did they run out of time? I won't waste much time comparing this with the originals; suffice to say, put them out of your mind, this isn't a body snatcher remake.
Less than horrifying action horror-thriller
posted on 21 Jul 2009Frequently a triumph of style over storytelling, The Invasion is an unapologetic matinée action thriller. It doesn't work to its full potential. There's a surfeit of non-contiguous set pieces (don't y'know!), a long way of saying that bits get shoved in because they're part of what happens in this sort of flick.Nicole Kidman does the same sort of job she did in The Interpreter - almost exactly the same sort of film, in fact. Daniel Craig is excellent, better than in Munich or any post-Bond role. Star of the show is Jackson Bond, a real natural.I liked some of the shooting (and occasionally adored it). The music-video approach to editing is a little self-conscious sometimes. The big moral ending is a big fudged and overstated but then one understands that the film got the studio-sausage-maker treatment, so who knows what was meant to be? 5.5/10
Poor Carol Bennell and her stupidity
posted on 19 Jul 2009What a stupid movie! So sad... it could have been great. It's actual an alright movie... but OMG Carol Bennell (Nicole Kidman) is constantly unbelievable STUPID! Downright unintelligent!! And she is supposed to be a psychiatrist. I can't believe all the (so easy to avoid with just a tiny bit of thinking) mistakes she makes. Some times for the sake of suspense (still too stupid), but mostly just because of bad writing I guess. I mean... I was really looking forward to see this movie, but now that I have, I just simply HATE it! I was so annoyed by Carol's foolishness and was actually having my own battle within because of that...! Stupid b***h.Only watch if you have a strong stomach that can handle so much over the top foolishness! So sad...
defective product
posted on 13 Jul 2009You know when capitalism goes bad at the movies, because the producers forget to conceal that viewers are really just consumers. The first half of this movie is average, and then the second half arrives, heavily bandaged, and relying on convention so much that it just becomes dumber and dumber until it falls to pieces. The more convention reigns, the less specificity you get, and the less satisfying everything becomes - and the more you ask, why did they think this remake was necessary? Sadly, convention is what makes nervous industry execs relax and open their checkbooks. This movie makes us spend a lot of time in alleys, parking garages, and cinder block service-halls. I guess they saved a ton on sets. But as I was popping in my next movie, I was thinking, "Did I really just watch a movie whose climactic scene involves waiting around a convenience store?" Everyone wears gray and black after they go pod. No one with an ugly coat or bad hair, no pre-teens in slutty clothes. Everyone looks like they work at a creative agency. The town at the end is supposed to be D.C. or Baltimore (I lost track), but it's clearly L.A.. It's all unspecific and interchangeable. Prior to the invasion Kidman isn't exactly lively. She whispers all her lines, so very little difference registers when she needs to become chilly to blend in. Another problem lies exactly where it should have been anticipated; the more people become pods, the less emotional range the actors can show. But here they're all haughtiness, peevishness & resentment. The more emotion they show, the LESS scary they are. Poor Jeremy Northan has just one scene before he's off to pod land. It takes a lot of work to make Craig look unattractive but they succeed here.The reconception of the pod outbreak as an infectious cycle results in a movie that behaves more like the zombie flick, 28 Days Later. Of all the reproductive methods shown in the invasion movies, I was fine with giant quivering gummi-bears, slimy pupas, tentacles snaking up people's nostrils, but puking into the beverages of unsuspecting victims is just grotesque. There are two thoroughly nasty shots of wait-staff bending over a service table, hocking into coffee pots (in plain view) which are so over the top they'd be comical if the movie was a subversive riff on how oblivious the population is. No such luck. It's merely disgusting. The shots are as absurd as anything in Buckaroo Banzai, another movie where aliens hock things up out of their throats. Maybe the next remake should be a comedy. It might have been a beautiful send-up of Scientology. Kidman's movies have had enormous problems lately; this movie, The Stepford Wives, and I'm going out on a limb (because I haven't seen it) Bewitched. Twice now she has had to return to the studio to shame-facedly reshoot inept, revised finales. The end here, which reverses everything, is in every way the equal of the nonsensical conclusion that was duct-taped onto her rotten Stepford Wives remake.It must be a grim moment after a dud preview, and after you've brought in the Wachowski Bros to spice things up (and John McTiegue to pinch-hit) that you realize nothing can rescue your movie. I'm guessing this occurred during the late night shoot of a careening car piled high with evil pod businessmen in a failed effort to portray something thrilling. In the ridiculous 'making of' feature, the crew is as dumb as modern culture allows. They're still pushing the idea that the first movie was about Communism, when Siegel has continually asserted that it was ridiculing suburbia. The Communism & McCarthism allegories, fascinating though they are, came later. Keep your eyes peeled for a ridiculous starstruck physician (Marc Siegel) and a Homeland Security Researcher (Terry O'Sullivan) who must be pretty desperate to appear as talking heads, and take a paycheck for badger viewers about a crap sci-fi movie.
This "Invasion" Needs to Be Conquered 0*
posted on 13 Jul 2009Who wrote this junk?Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig star in this mysterious trash dealing with a virus that comes to earth and causes people to be almost monster-like. They become like zombies and then resort to violence to get others to join them.At first there is a nuclear disaster which brings about the epidemic.You come down with the disease by falling asleep and it manifests itself during the rem dreaming period. I would suggest that you risk the virus and fall asleep on this miserable film. The writing is a complete joke.New York is quarantined and Kidman's son and ex-husband run to Baltimore to stay with his mother. The latter looks just like the type you would meet in Borough Park, Brooklyn.Of course, Kidman is in pursuit and she naturally gets into a pharmacy and has a serum from keeping her from sleeping. What hogwash.
Rethinking of the classic story removes many of the elements that makes the story so scary
posted on 11 Jul 2009Fourth film version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a misfire. Neither the disaster that most pre-release reviews made it out to be, nor the classic a (very) few post release reviews claimed, this is destined to get lost sometime soon. The problem with the film is that in rethinking the story it removed many of the elements that made it so scary. Here the virus is known about more or less from the get go as shuttle crash brings the "virus" (gone are the pods) to earth. The battle is that the virus now bringing an end to conflict, everyone is getting along...mostly. It seems that Nicole Kidman's son is immune and with him a vaccine can be made. Owing more to say Robert Heinlein's Puppet Masters and its 1990's film version (which I really like) this is a scifi movie of the been there done that variety. Sure there are some scares but the visceral punch is gone. The first version worked because of what it represented. Philip Kaufman's remake/sequel worked (possibly better) by taking the known form of the original and upping the ante in all the right spots. Abel Ferrara's army base set Body Snatchers worked (less well than the first two but still worked) because it spun the tale in new directions, and even covered similar ground as this one. If this version works at all, it's perhaps because of the craft, but its chills and thrills are empty and moments after a scare or shiver you realize that what frightened you makes no sense except in the unreal world on screen. For hard core fans of the stars or for those needing to see every scifi remake that comes down the pike only. All others are advised to avoid this waste of celluloid, until you're forced to see it on endless cable rotation. (Hey what did you expect from a film that sat so long on the shelf that new scenes featuring Daniel Craig were shot long before he was even cast as James Bond, thus allowing him to become, unintentionally, one of the big names in the cast).
Lackluster remake of a sci-fi classic
posted on 09 Jul 2009THE INVASION (2007) ** Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Jeremy Northam, Jackson Bond, Jeffrey Wright, Veronica Cartwright, Josef Sommer, Celia Weston, Roger Rees. Lackluster remake of the sci-fi chiller "The Invasion of The Body Snatchers" with an alien parasitic organism that hitches a ride on the Space Shuttle which crashes releasing it to an unsuspecting Washington, DC populace including psychiatrist Kidman who suddenly sees odd behavior in her patients and the slowly adding of 2 and 2 to the threat at hand. In spite of some state-of-the-art visuals which vary from cool to boring, the film suffers by not focusing more on the social strata than the geopolitical climate which its forbearers had the good insight to do just that. Kudos to having some insight to have Cartwright (from the vastly superior first remake in 1978) on board as one of Kidman's troubled patients; and yes it's true the Wachowski Brothers were hired to pump up the climactic chase sequence. (Dir: Oliver Hirschbiegel)
Oh dear
posted on 05 Jul 2009Craig and Kidman are always a draw, but even they can't elevate this stuff above mediocre. Unaware of the production troubles and coming to this film cold, I still felt it just doesn't get off the ground. The pod people aren't scary enough, Kidman's "I must find my kid" routine mimics her ex-husband's motivation in another sci-fi flop remake, War of the Worlds. In both films, the danger just does not seem immediate enough. And the alien life-force is defeated far too easily in the end, with no input from the protagonists (another similarity to the Tom Cruise flop). Re-making a fairly good film badly seems to show up the dearth of ideas in Hollywood at the moment. There really wasn't a better original script kicking about to attract this talent and financing?
roughly translated as "exciting" but perhaps in a physical sense
posted on 05 Jul 2009The mysterious crash of the space shuttle leads to the terrifying discovery that there is something alien within the wreckage. Those who come in contact with it are changing in ominous and inexplicable ways. Soon Washington, DC psychiatrist Carol Bennell and her friend, Dr. Ben Driscoll, learn the shocking truth about the growing extraterrestrial epidemic: it attacks its victims while they sleep, leaving them physically unchanged but strangely unfeeling and inhuman. As the infection spreads, more and more people are altered and it becomes impossible to know who can be trusted. (roughly translated as "exciting" but perhaps in a physical sense)Now Carol's only hope is to stay awake long enough to find her young son, who may hold the key to stopping the devastating invasion.
What people see under microscopes in movies is ridiculous
posted on 29 Jun 2009very weak and unconvincing movie, the plot is flat and you've seen it in a number of other movies. complete lack of novelty. This isn't getting any better because of the superficial attempts to dress this plot in what should be "plausible" explanation. any attempt for realism is ruined by what s supposed to look like science. it is not. what we have here are stereotypes, coming from earlier movies. not a touch of reality. live 3D images from EM (electrone microscope), well that is just as possible as Skype chat over 19th century telegraph. don' wont to bother with the rest. its hopeless...waste your time with this movie only if you don't have anything better to do.
If your a fan of any other iteration you will hate this.
posted on 28 Aug 2009Hollywood destroyed everything good about this film. There was a resounding creepiness that looms over the body snatcher remakes and the original. This film misses that on every mark. No pods... No siren screams... And the ending, well, is a slap in the face to the concept.If your not a fan or have never seen any other versions you might think it is OK. But thats it, just OK. They screwed up one of the scariest concepts ever thought up. Permormences were OK. It had one or two bright points but overall it was crap. Take the cgi out of war of the worlds and you have invasion... thats not a good thing.