Monday, June 23, 2008

After catching a run of Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Donald Sutherland a week or so ago on cable, I moved up The Invasion on the queue. I know there’s an older, original version - that version scared my mother when she was a child. The Sutherland version creeped me out as a teenager. I was curious how well they did the update.

Beau didn’t like it, judging from the snarky remarks he made throughout. I thought it was OK, but the 1978 version is still slightly creepier. But maybe that’s my nostalgia talking.

The story was updated to today’s technology and the method of body snatching means the phrase “pod people” wouldn’t make sense to those of us who use it based on the 1978 version. It’s actually more insidious. Nicole Kidman is good, but I was distracted by her American accent. I kept thinking that there was no real reason why she couldn’t have use her real accent for this character.

It’s PG-13 for a reason. What disturbed me were the previews that showed before the movie on the DVD - they were not appropriate for the PG-13 rating of the movie, imho. Skip them.

3 stars out of 5.