Body Snatchers
Year Released: 1993Directed By: Abel Ferrara
Starring: Gabrielle Anwar, Terry Kinney, Forest Whitaker, Meg Tilly, Billy Wirth, Reilly Murphy, Christine Elise
(R, 87 min.)
In case you hadn't noticed, pod people are back amongst us. This third screen version of the science fiction classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, manages to find a new slant on the old story about alien invaders who emerge from their pods and take over their human hosts -- eliminating their emotions and individuality in the process. Gritty New York director Abel Ferrara (Ms. 45, King of New York, Bad Lieutenant) might seem an unlikely choice to helm this studio-backed genre project, but the pairing worked out well. Compared to the 1956 Don Siegel-directed version which emphasized the metaphorical relationship between the pod takeover and McCarthyism and the 1978 Philip Kaufman-directed version which focused on the New Age psychobabble's weak defenses against personality takeover, Ferrara's new rendition views events from the perspective of a teen malcontent struggling with the establishment of her individuality. Anwar stars as Marti Malone, a typically rebellious teenager who moves with her father (Kinney), a scientist with the Environmental Protection Agency, her stepmother (Tilly) and younger stepbrother (Murphy) to a remote military base in Alabama where her father is assigned to oversee the cleanup of a hazardous waste dump. Marti resents her stepmother and is bored with life at the isolated base. Then she meets a like-minded pal Jenn (Elise) and an interesting young helicopter pilot (Wirth), but things keep getting weirder and weirder. People around them start behaving like mindless robots with portions of their personalities missing. But, then, who's to say? Marti has always been suspicious of her stepmother's “otherness,” and one of the military's great strengths is its group-think mentality. And if Jenn's mom now goes out to mysterious bridge games with the ladies, is she really worse off than when she spent all her time passed out drunk on the couch? Weird may exist only in the eye of the beholder. Ferrara basically approaches this as a teens-as-outsiders type story while maintaining his striking visual stylistics throughout. Angles are skewed, threat lurks in the murky distances, and action is concise and rapid. Whitaker's portrayal of the base physician who is clued into what's going on and defiantly fends off his pod takeover by downing bottles of amphetamines is edgy in the extreme. As the stepmom, Tilly is truly frightening as she becomes the first pod convert in her family. The sound effects and music also contribute quite effectively to the overall portent. With a startlingly climactic finale, Body Snatchers only underscores the ultimate illogic of placing your trust in your kin.
Marjorie Baumgarten [1994-01-14]
