It has to say something that this fourth filming of Jack Finney's classic science fiction tale, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", is as empty as our invading alien antagonists but perhaps it has something to do with the fact that when German director Oliver Hirschbiegel (making his American debut) turned in his cut of the film to the suits at Warner they disliked what he did enough to hire on the Wachowski brothers (The Matrix) to re-write sections of the movie and also bring along James McTeigue (V For Vendetta) to film additional, most likely action, scenes.

If anything, this proves the appeal of Finney's premise of the people you love and care for being taken over by alien beings and turned into soulless shells for it to have been filmed repeated times but fans of the original 1956 film, the 1978 remake, and even Abel Ferrara's 1993 version are likely to be disappointed with what's on display here. All of the "pod people" activity from those movies has been decidedly dialled down with very few shots of the gestation period of our invaders and very few sequences even showing the methodical take-over of humanity. Sure, there's a few moments where people are infected by having a mucus-like substance spit onto them but David Kajganich's script seems much more concerned trying to make clever analogies to the situation of current events like terrorism and overseas war (even going so far as to tossing in a pretentious dinner party moment that's trying to be smarter than it is).

The Invasion begins interestingly enough as an American spaceship crashes into the ground while making an unscheduled emergency landing. As if that wasn't bad enough it seems that an alien spore was hitchhiking a ride to Earth and not too long after the accident any Government agents or local residents who have come into contact with the wreckage or crash site start being taken over by the virus. This makes everyday normal people start acting distant and also freaks out any animals (such as dogs) that come near them.

Into the picture comes psychiatrist Carol Bennell (Nicole Kidman) who's been raising her young son Oliver (Jackson Bond) by herself since splitting-up with hubby Tucker (Jeremy Northam). After Oliver comes home with an odd skin-like substance on his hand, Carol gives the sample to her Doctor friend Ben (Daniel Craig, who is completely wasted here) and soon begins to suspect, with the help of an Internet search engine for crissakes, that people may not be who they seem.

The remainder of The Invasion has Kidman's character finding that her ex-husband isn't who he seems to be and, since he was one of the agents on the scene, he's one of the leaders of the alien invaders because he was one of the first infected. To add insult to injury, it also seems that Oliver is immune to it all and might be the only chance for finding a cure. The only problem is that he's spending the weekend at his dad's house. With the help of Ben, she sets out to save her son - which forces her to act emotionless to blend in (and gives the movie its only effective scene when she has to show no feeling when two people leaping to their deaths from a building right in front of her eyes) and leads to an overblown finale loaded with plenty of mindless action sequences.

A completely unnecessary retelling, Hirschbiegel's film does manage to be stylishly shot and gets a pretty solid performance from Kidman but the main reason it never really seems to click is that the plot never seems to sway from its linear path and it's just not that engaging or entertaining - it's one of the more robotic Hollywood productions in recent memory and the poorest of the four takes on Finney's tale. (Chris Hartley, 2/1/08)

Directed By: Oliver Hirschbiegel.
Written By: David Kajganich.

Starring: Nicole Kidman, Danigel Craig, Jeremy Northam, Jackson Bond.

Picture Ratio: 1.85:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: For some reason I didn't find this to be as good as transfer as usual from Warner and a recent theatrical film. While it was shot with lots of muted colours, I just found the picture to look almost too dull and there were a few jagged edges at times. It's a clean print, it's just not as impressive as I expected.

Extras: Apart from a featurette entitled, "We've Been Snatched Before", that interviews filmmakers and experts about the history of the story, it's previous versions, and it's signficance to modern events, there really isn't much here. We get three other brief featurettes about the film's production and they all offer nothing much of interest. And we don't even get a trailer, which upsets me simply because I believe trailers are the first tool in selling a movie to an audience and can help make or break how well they perform.