The Invasion (R-2006)

It seems every generation gets its own version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", the classic film which at the time was a metaphor for communism. After the original, you got the very good remake with Donald Sutherland. This latest version stars Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig and is the lesser of the three versions. The leads are good, the story is exactly what you might expect it to be, but it just isn't as good overall as its predecessors. The message in this one is sort of a rejection of the whole ideal of Utopia and the concept of "one united world". When the virus at the center of this one, which takes over its host and makes everybody "one", takes root, you have world peace, nations getting along and everything is "just great". The problem is that individuality and your own identity are gone. You are basically part of the global "hive". In that respect, I think it raises an interesting question: Every one thinks they want world peace and a "brotherhood of man", but at what price? Part of being human is the fact that we are flawed and take great pride in our individuality. What if that had to be sacrificed? While thinking that the original was a metaphor for communism, seeing Nicole Kidman front and center in this film made me wonder: Is this one a metaphor for Scientology?? To be fair, no one has implied any such thing, but it did cross my mind. Perhaps that made the film just that much more interesting for me.

Grade: C-

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