The most interesting idea in The Invasion, limited chiefly to insinuation, is that Washington DC is already full of "pod-people," those who all behave identically, think identically, and force everyone into their perspective. Accordingly, everyone in The Invasion dresses in identical clothing: black, sensible, functional, unexceptional. Hints of this conformity arrive early, at a restaurant where the rich and powerful sit in circles and treat fundamental arguments about human nature as diverting hypotheticals. That is, most of them. A Russian diplomat, an obvious megaphone for the authors, has something to say. In a sentence: society relies on the false appearance of civility and hides our animal violence. This is the kind of blunt commentary that thrives in the fringes of art. Question the limits of orderly society in a straight drama, and you risk being didactic; viewers put up their defenses. Secret it away in a genre story, and you can get the interrogation scene from The Dark Knight, or that creepy drive with the warden in Shutter Island.
This kind of commentary is the brain-food that keeps a movie like The Invasion intermittently engaging, even as it fails to rise above the level of archetype. Most of the story replicates the basic structure of the three previous incarnations of Jack Finney's original novel. Notions from all three movies cameo. Kidman's manic walk through a street recalls Kevin McCarthy in the 1956 film. Naturalistic cutaways to frightened passers-by evoke the slow-burn atmosphere of Kaufman's 1978 remake. A helicopter escape threatens to end like the 1992 Abel Ferrara film, but proves optimistic instead. To be fair, The Invasion reworks the "pod people" syndrome as an infectious disease instead of intruding alien clones. It was a bit easier in previous films to draw a line between "us" and "them." In this film, Nicole Kidman gets infected early, and she spends the rest of the movie fighting that infection. Apart from that little twist, much remains the same. Confidantes become goons. Lovers become traitors. Children leer with subdued malice. Sleep is death.
The previous three films are famous more for their allegorical time-keeping, with the original tweaking at the Red Scare, the first remake touching on new-age cults (shades of EST lie in Nimoy's confident guru), and the second remake hinting at lockstep militarism. However, the first two films have a strong grasp of suspense, and all three sympathize deeply with their heroes, who slowly journey into validated paranoia. They scoff, they study, they doubt, they listen, and they establish that, yes, everyone is actually out to get them. The Invasion limits much of that development to a contrived montage, heavy on flashbacks, that explains the plot to Kidman. Who needs intuition when you have frantic film editors? She's filled in on other details by nameless secondary characters who get rounded up by the body-snatched as soon as they've delivered their exposition.
Much of the film relies on discordant editing. Sometimes this seems purposeful, as during an abrupt subway chase. Its jarring cuts, skipping forward and backward in time, nicely suggest a mind pulled in multiple directions. The rest of the time, the editing hints at the film's troubled production. Director Oliver Hirschbiegel, most famous for his Hitler bio-pic Downfall, was eventually replaced by James McTiegue and the Wachowski siblings, who were brought on to juice up the film with special effects and action. The switch makes some sense, given that the trio's V For Vendetta melded satire, drama, and action to relative success, but The Invasion isn't a film that cries out for action. A late film car chase is notable less for its intensity, more for how Kidman and her son manage to survive despite crashing into every single free-standing structure in DC, up to and including conservative senator Saxby Chambliss.*
Although it might seem glib and "criticky" to call a body snatcher movie "soulless," there are few better adjectives to throw at this film's dull execution of promising notions. Weirdly, the film's central question - whether or not a brainwashed pacifism is ethically superior to free will's violence - came up in the last review I wrote, for the fourth season of Angel. The difference is that Angel, no matter its flaws, always carries a weary humanism, a perspective that helps to shape its drama into more than just a rubric. The Invasion never finds the time to establish an emotional baseline. It's too busy adhering to the mechanics of its story. Before the alien viruses even arrive, scenes feel predictable, dialogue lands with a thud. The film functions with the cold emptiness of its infected doppelgangers.
RATING: C
*: Sadly, this is not true. Senator Saxby Chambliss was unable to commit to a cameo.
As I watched The Invasion, I kept thinking about the almost immediate narrative pressure that comes from paranoia. In the middle of the film, there are some undeniably effective sequences that hinge on Nicole Kidman's character simply walking around while others watch her. Cut to her: frantic. Cut to them: calm. Even in a mediocre flick like this, suspense can be mined. I started thinking about all those choice quotes about paranoia in film and literature.
The most famous is probably in Catch-22:
This was misquoted in, of all things, Eight Legged Freaks:
Stephen King mentioned the phrase...
...in his novella Everything's Eventual, which was also seen on a hat in the film version of 1408. King's quote comes a line Charles Manson offered in a Rolling Stone interview back in 1970:
Graffiti artist Banksy, star of the fantastic documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, had this to say in his book Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall:
RATING: C
*: Sadly, this is not true. Senator Saxby Chambliss was unable to commit to a cameo.
As I watched The Invasion, I kept thinking about the almost immediate narrative pressure that comes from paranoia. In the middle of the film, there are some undeniably effective sequences that hinge on Nicole Kidman's character simply walking around while others watch her. Cut to her: frantic. Cut to them: calm. Even in a mediocre flick like this, suspense can be mined. I started thinking about all those choice quotes about paranoia in film and literature.
The most famous is probably in Catch-22:
"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you."
"Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean people aren't following me."
"Perfect paranoia is perfect awareness"
"...total paranoia is total awareness."
"Your mind is working at its best when you're being paranoid. You explore every
avenue and possibility of your situation at high speed with total clarity."
Alan Moore, famed author of Watchmen, might not be speaking of paranoia specifically, but given how the conspiracy theorists of the world most often require a healthy dose of paranoia, his quote is either apt or frightening. Maybe both:
"The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not the Illuminati,
or the Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien theory. The truth is far more frightening.
Nobody is in control. The world is rudderless."
Creepy right? Say what you will about body-snatching alien viruses, they at least keep things organized.
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