Review of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) by Nick A — 27 Apr 2010

As has been made apparent to us before, creating a worthy book-to-film adaptation is very difficult. That being said, remaking a model book-to-film adaptation is nearly impossible. Philip Kaufman, award-winning director and gifted screenwriter, upgrades on Siegel's adaptation (also called "Invasion of the Body Snatchers") of Jack Finney's 1955 sci-fi novel, "The Body Snatchers", while simultaneously offering homage to it. This longer, more in-depth remake also expands on the terror of the first, creating a more modern visual exploration of what scares us the most: a worldwide conspiracy, in which we are the ones everyone's out to get.

Kaufman's film, similar to Siegel's, focuses on a health inspector named Matthew Bennell (Dr. Miles Bennell in the original), played by Donald Sutherland, who, along with co-worker Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) and friends Jack and Nancy Bellicec (Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright), realizes that citizens of the San Francisco area, where he lives, are being duplicated by alien pods, which copy their human victims while they sleep, then discard their bodies. As the invasion spreads sporadically, Bennell tries to inform others of his terrifying discovery, only to find that everyone already knows...and is a part of it.

Masterful in the art of adaptation, Kaufman gives this translation what original novelist Jack Finney envisioned while writing his paranoid classic: a chillingly atmospheric thriller, ripe with fear, suspense and temperamental anxiety. Sutherland and Adams share the spotlight and both do so very convincingly, whereas Jeff Goldblum, expert on paranoid studies ("The Fly", "Jurassic Park'"), gives the film a necessary idiosyncratic character, contributing much of the film's humor, whilst heightening it's level of neurosis.

Philip Kaufman's "Invasion" has set a precedent for how a remake should be -- advanced, though respectful to its predecessor. Not taking anything from the '56 version, which still stands as one of American cinema's most monumental achievements, Kaufman's deft writing ability heaves this remake to the top of the seventies' sci-fi list in an era shared with definitive masterpieces such as Ridley Scott's "Alien", and Tarkovsky's "Stalker". Embrace the apprehension that the film strives for; if you do, you, too, will begin to see the world through skeptical, suspicious, and very terrified eyes...and you'll love it!