Review of Body Snatchers (1993) by Sailormoon797 F — 04 Nov 2010

I was excited when I saw that Invasion of the Body Snatchers was on my free on demand list. I thought, well they shortened it to Body Snatchers because it was too long of a title. Nope, it's the 93 remake of the 56 movie.

To say I was disappointed is putting it mildly. If you were going to air a remake why not air the 78 one, which I hear is also a fantastic movie. You had to pick the low-level remake. Now you may ask yourself why I watched this movie then.

Well I, on this day, started to watch 1994 movie Trauma, by famed Italian giallo director Dario Argento. I could not make it past 30 minutes that movie was so bad. I don't blame that on Dario at all as Trauma was his first American production, therefore he probably had to answer to executives far more than he would have in Italy.

In America you're going to have far more restrictions. Hell, Takeshi Kitano made a movie in America, called Brother, and he said the experience was so bad that he's not filming outside Japan ever again.

So yea Trauma was terrible so I had to pick another movie, so I ended up choosing this one. Not that I had a problem with this movie, in fact I quite enjoyed it for what it was, but the idea of the movie is fantastic, yet this movie never seems to do all it can to help fulfill that potential.

The problem is that there is just not enough time to develop the story to its full potential because this movie is under 90 minutes long. Granted the original movie was 80 minutes long, but back in the day I'm sure they knew how to get the point across.

The thing is, and this is something a lot of people can relate to, is that in this type of world you cannot trust ANYBODY. It's all fair game. You take that element and you mix it with a political allegory and you have the making for a FANTASTIC story.

But, like I said, this movie never explores its themes as well as it should. I think it was mostly concerned with getting Gabrielle Anwar as much on-screen time as humanly possible. And I had no problem with this at all, as Gabrielle sure was purty back in the day, now.

..well not so much. But yea, I enjoyed this movie, even if it was a little bit corny and some of the scenes made me laugh. But I had a fun time and there's some great ideas here that never really amount to much.

So I'd say don't watch it if you want to compare it to the original and the 70s remake, because while I may not have seen either, I can guarantee it won't compare to those two.