Body Snatchers (1993) 87m
I don't know why anyone felt the need to produce another remake of 1956's classic sci-fi/horror film INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, yet here it is, and the lineup of creative talent behind it is promising. Check out this intriguing combination: writer-director Larry Cohen (screenplay credit), writer-director Stuart Gordon (story credit), and writer-director Abel Ferrara (who gets the directing chore despite being the only one of the three to show no previous interest in the genre). It sounds as if the resulting film might be a body snatcher designed by committee, but the end result is a fairly tight product.
Prior knowledge makes this difficult viewing - there's little suspense or surprise because by now we have come to know the story so well: a few people discover that their family, friends, and neighbors are gradually being 'replaced' by emotionally void duplicates and then find themselves running for their lives. Story is faithful to the original (and the Jack Finney novel) in concept only. Its two major changes are firstly that the central protagonist is a 17-year old girl (Gabrielle Anwar), and secondly that the small-town setting (changed to a big city in Philip Kaufman's 1978 version) has been overshadowed by a military base. It would seem that what we have here is some ready-to-bake commentary on army personnel sacrificing their individuality to become a gestalt of emotionless drones, bla-bla-bla, but fortunately the story avoids this route and takes the more personal touch of paralleling the invasion of the alien 'body snatchers' with the 'invasion' of a new stepmother into Anwar's home (a creepy performance by Meg Tilly). As far as Anwar is concerned, her mother has already been replaced; the alien-invader scenario that follows is the realization/externalization of her fears now brought forth for everyone else to see. Ferrara keeps the human element at the forefront of the story by shooting much of BODY SNATCHERS in closeup and midshot, letting faces and bodies fill the frame. This keeps the film real and down-to-earth until the first FX sequence, which may or may not be an improvement on previous versions depending on your point of view. One of the more frustrating elements of the 1956 film for me as a young, first-time viewer, was the total lack of explanation concerning the body-transfer from seed pod to human copy. Ferrara/Cohen/Gordon present a simple, workable explanation - although it may be argued that it is scarier *not* to know anything of the process, and it was this lack of information that contributed to the nightmarish quality of the original.
I don't think the FX are as big a problem as the decision to have Anwar narrating the story in flashback from frame one, however. Automatically we are assured that her character will be still be around by the end of the story, which robs BODY SNATCHERS of a pivotal element of suspense. I can't believe a writer as seasoned as Cohen would have let so obvious a slipup get by him. But then again, I find it surprising to see Abel Ferrara packaging a film so uncharacteristic of his usual down-in-the-dirt urban dramas. Has anyone checked their backyards for seed pods lately?
sburridge@hotmail.com
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews