The Invasion (2007)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Carol Bennell	Nicole Kidman
Ben Driscoll	Daniel Craig
Tucker Kaufman	Jeremy Northam
Oliver	Jacksom Bond
Dr. Stephen Galeano	Jeffrey Wright
Wendy Lenk	Veronica Cartwright	½
Dr. Henryk Belicec	Josef Sommer	½
Ludmilla Belicec	Celia Weston
Yorish	Roger Rees

Review

In The Invasion, which is the less intense and imminent brother of I Am Legend, German filmmaker Oliver Hirschbiegel takes the step to Hollywood (helped by the Wachowski brothers in a stand-in appearance) and asks if the human race would be better off being invaded by an alien virus which transforms our behaviour into that of pleasant, numb zombies. The most interesting aspect of this suspenseful, but unfresh remake number umpteen of Jack Finney's The Body Snatchers (last adapted by Abel Ferrara in 1993), is that it allows the viewer to take a look at the human race from the outside - leaving us to ponder if our aggressive, egocentric nature is that valuable in and of itself. Then again, every lifeform which has ever existed has fought to maintain its identity and to resist outside influence.

But if The Invasion is quite a good look at ourselves, it is not so very interesting a peek into the presented alternative. The invaders are conveyed in a recognizably flat manner which we might think holds something enigmatic - some way of life we haven't quite seen before or cannot understand. But as the movie progresses, this enigma is vaporizing into predictable and, ironically, humanlike behaviour which largely contradicts much of what this film proposes. It seems these creatures only act rowdy when the film need them to for action purposes. And after the fine work Nicole Kidman has laid down in making Carol and her fear believable and palpable, the abrupt ending does little to enhance the overall impression of this film.