Verdict
Summary
Minimalist but effective and it’s been well remastered.
Plot: When Environmental Protection Agency inspector Steve Malone (Terry Kinney) travels to a remote military base in order to check for toxic materials, he brings his family along for the ride. After arriving at the base, his teenage daughter Marti (Gabrielle Anwar) befriends Jean Platt (Christine Elise), daughter of the base’s commander, General Platt (R. Lee Ermey). When people at the base begin acting strangely, Marti becomes convinced that they are slowly being replaced by plant-like aliens.
Review: The third filmed version (the first in 1956, the second in 1978) of the Jack Finney story, Body Snatchers is the shortest and most radically different than the other film versions. A teen girl (Gabrielle Anwar) and her family (parents played by Terry Kinney and Meg Tilly) move into a military base for a brief period, and within a day, things get strange. Soldiers on the base are exhibiting decidedly … alien attributes as their emotions are stripped away from one day to the next. It turns out that alien life forms are transforming everyone in their sleep, and at night, in a nearby lake, soldiers are withdrawing cocoon-like pods from the water and loading them onto trucks. When the teen girl and a handsome helicopter pilot (Billy Wirth) finally figure out what’s going on, it’s pretty much too late: everyone on base is an alien, including the girl’s family. There is a plan in place to spread the alien organism throughout the world, and this quiet apocalypse is already full under way.
This is the least apocalyptic of the Invasion films, but the implications at the end suggest that the two survivors at the end of the film are completely and utterly alone as humans. Things happen very quickly in this film, and as there are fewer characters to care about, there is less involvement with what happens. The effects are minimal, but effective, and Abel Ferrara’s direction is sinister and creepy. To some, this is the best of the Body Snatchers movies, to others, merely a quickie sci-fi flick. You decide.
Warner Archives has just released a high-definition on-demand Blu-ray of Body Snatchers, and as expected, the transfer is pretty sweet looking, but as per usual with the Warner Archive releases, there aren’t any special features at all. That said, the Blu-ray is worth adding to your collection regardless.