Body Snatchers
Year:
1993
Directed by:
Abel Ferrara
Rated:
R
Country:
United States
Runtime:
1 hr. 27 min.
Production Company:
Warner Bros.
Written by:
Raymond Cistheri
Larry Cohen
Stuart Gordon
et al.
Starring:
Gabrielle Anwar
Terry Kinney
Forest Whitaker
Billy Wirth
Similar Films:
Slither
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
The Invasion
Exactly what you'd expect: inferiority.
Okay, first let's get the preliminary stuff out of the way: In case you didn't know, Body Snatchers is the second remake of the 1950s classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, blah blah blah. I could go on about the history and the merits of the different versions, where they excel, which ones are better and in what ways, but you probably don't care about those so much or you'd be reading their reviews. So, I'll cut to the chase: Body Snatchers is not a good movie, but it does have its moments.
This movie plays very much like a B-level contemporary take on a classic, which makes sense because that's exactly what it is. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing, it just so happens that it often is. The acting is mediocre and the plot is derivative. The gore, however, is pretty creative. This movie takes the essential plot points, places them in a melodrama of a girl with family problems, and gives us some gross-out moments that would make gore effects wizard Tom Savini proud. The original version was tame in this respect, the first remake took some risks, and this one continues the upward trend with truly horrendous abominations: half-formed clones, bodies literally sucked empty, and (shiver) tiny tentacles reaching into sleeping nostrils and other orifices to steal genetic material. All of these scenes will either make you barf or smile, but unfortunately there are a mere handful of them.
Body Snatchers does have a few moments of insight and can still be viewed as a somewhat effective paranoia movie. It does show us why our emotions are important, and in doing so it confronts stoicism. Interestingly, the stoicism of the podpeople very closely resembles that of the uniformed soldiers on the military base at which the events take place. This leads to some tense moments in which we cannot tell whether certain characters are stonefaced because they have been converted or because they are in the army. In doing all if this, the film also questions the concept of identity -- what makes you who you are? As in the other films, the clones generally act the same as the originals, other than the signature flat affect. The problem with all of this is that if you are looking for some insight into the horrors of conformity and paranoia, you're watching the wrong movie. This one just does not do the job nearly as well as either of its predecessors.
This film is very much like one other classic's remake, The Thing, which also happens to be a paranoia flick (though its original is not). Both of these remakes bank on stripping stories and assaulting the audience with creative visceral images. That is okay for a film to do; there are some great films and film franchises that are based on just that. But, if that is your only merit, as it pretty much is with Body Snatchers and The Thing, you have to deliver enough of it to warrant a full-length picture. For me, a handful is not enough.
