The movie begins with Dr. Bennell being held in a psychiatric facility after attempting to warn his town of an alien pod takeover. How did he go from a respected physician to a patient in a psychiatric facility? It began his old flame, Becky, moved back into town. She came back, because her cousin was making accusations that her father was no longer himself. Unfortunately Bennell and Becky later learn that her cousin’s accusations were true and that Becky’s uncle has been taken over by pods. As Bennell is searching for answers he finds a pod for Becky in the basement of her father’s house and immediately asks her to move in with him. As they continued to search for answers the townspeople plot ways of infecting them both. Realizing how much they love one another they decide to sneak out of town and warn others of what is happening before it was too late for anyone to be saved. Unfortunately Becky’s exhaustion leaves her vulnerable to sleep, which allows the pod to overtake her and turn her against her lover. The devastation, heartbreak, and fear Benell felt was indescribable by the look the on his face. Once he is finished with his story a report of a pod spotting comes on the radio. It is only then that the doctors take heed to his warning and begin taking action against the epidemic.
Before watching the film our class was introduced to John Whitehead and Tim Dirks who argue the movie held great political allegory. Dirks saw the movie as a reflection of socialistic Communism; saying that it was “read fear of annihilation by nuclear war and showed the dehumanization and take-over of an entire community by large seed pods.” Whitehead agreed with Dirks on some levels, but he took things a few steps further. He not only saw the movie as a mirror of McCarthyism, but he saw parallels between it and World War II. He also said film students often make a correlation with AIDS to the movie. How can a movie with such poor special effects and an even poorer plot take on so much meaning?
As I began watching the movie I had this idea of communism and the horrors it causes based on the critics opinions and the idea that the movie was made to poke fun at the red scare. As I got deeper into the movie I did not see any of these correlations. Instead once the movie was over I did not even see it as a horror movie worth anyone’s time. I saw this movie that took approximately twenty-three days to film as a crappy b-movie horror flick. In most horror films you have the cheesy clumsy female who falls over her own two feet and the man who has to check out everything. Not in Invasion there was no suspense, everything was predictable. To add to the painful infliction it caused me to watch the film they threw a love story in it. This was nothing at all how I expected things to turn out yet people actually watch this movie and see examples of McCarthyism saying that by having no emotion we have no control over our selves and therefore allow whoever is in charge to make decisions for us. The lack of emotion shown after being overtaken simply reminds me of the ignorance of people allowing others to decide and think for them instead of for themselves.
No matter which way you look at this movie whether it is as a political allegory or a horror flick it missed a lot of details and did not satisfactorily fill in the blanks. So not only was this movie a poor excuse of a horror movie, it also had a sappy love plot. On a scale of one to ten; ten being the highest I proudly rate this movie a three for lack of creativity, clarity, and all together interest.
Whitehead, John W. “Invasion of the Body Snatchers a Tale for Our Times” gadflyonline.com 15 November 2007. 2007.
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