BODY SNATCHERS
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Gabrielle Anwar, Terry Kenney, Billy Wirth, Meg Tilly. Screenplay: Stuart Gordon, Dennis Paoli & Nicholas St. John. Director: Abel Ferrara.
Abel Ferrara's BODY SNATCHERS marks the third screen adaptation of Jack Finney's novel THE BODY SNATCHERS, and you'd think that there wouldn't be all that much new to say about pod people by now. Don Siegel's 1956 INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS captured small-town menace; Phillip Kaufman's 1978 version transferred the story to San Francisco for a metaphor for big city alienation. The scene for this latest adaptation is an army base, and the metaphor has changed as well. Somewhere in BODY SNATCHERS is a poke at the military mindset, but it's buried beneath layers of atmosphere, atmosphere which works but doesn't make that extra leap to real terror.
BODY SNATCHERS opens as the Malone family makes its way towards Fort Daly, Alabama. Dad Steve (Terry Kenney) is an Environmental Protection Agency investigator sent to check out toxic waste storage at the base, and he brings along daughter Marti (Gabrielle Anwar), new wife Carol (Meg Tilly) and Carol's six-year-old son Andy (Reilly Murphy). It's not long after they arrive before it becomes clear that things aren't quite right at Fort Daly. The base physician (Forest Whitaker) notes a preponderance of paranoid episodes among soldiers and family members, and everyone seems just a bit too serene. Eventually, the full extent of the invasion is obvious to the Malones, and a young pilot (Billy Wirth) becomes the only person they can trust to help them escape.
Director Ferrara (BAD LIEUTENANT) has crafted a stylish and spooky look for the film, filtered in dark ambers and deep blues, full of shadows and twisted angles. The issue of identity is always present, as actors frequently appear only as silhouettes against the light, or veiled by other shadows. Some early scenes highlighting the pod people's uniformity, particularly a frighteningly comic scene where young Andy realizes the other kids in day care lack a certain artistic creativity, are extremely well-handled. Ferrara also manages the tricky task of directing his actors so that the transformed characters appear clearly to have changed without playing the stock blank-faced automoton. Technically, BODY SNATCHERS hits just about all of its marks, particularly with its rather graphic image of what happens to the remains of a human body after the transformation has taken place.
Yet while BODY SNATCHERS held my attention, it didn't do anything particularly interesting which seemed to warrand a re-telling of this already twice-told tale. The idea behind setting the invasion on a military base is sound; if everyone in the Army starts acting like drones with a singular purpose, who's going to notice? The screenwriters throw in one speech by the base commander (FULL METAL JACKET's R. Lee Ermey) which seems designed to emphasize this point, but Ferrara doesn't do much with it. Familial alienation seems to be a more prevalent theme, as Marti deals with her step-family, and her new friend Jenn (Christine Elise) copes with an alcoholic mother. No single theme really drives this BODY SNATCHERS, nor are any of the characters interesting enough to pull it along with them.
Structurally, BODY SNATCHERS suffers from a climax which seems far too drawn out. Once the Malones start running, the tension should continue to build, but too many of the scenes involving confrontations between "real" humans and the 'Snatchers lack punch. There is one wickedly chilling moment of revelation, but it is isolated. BODY SNATCHERS does a fantastic job of establishing its tone, and it does offer a few decent scares. The problem with Ferrara's pacing is that it's like the Body Snatchers themselves: too cool when the adrenaline should be flowing.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 pods: 5.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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