Arrow Video
4K UHD Release: November 12, 2024
Video: 1.85:1/2160p (HDR10/Dolby Vision)/Color
Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH
Run Time: 99:24
Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel & James McTeigue
A space shuttle crashes to Earth carrying an alien organism. Soon, people are changing, becoming detached, and emotionless. People like CDC director Tucker Kaufman (Jeremy Northam) who is investigating the crash. Meanwhile, his ex-wife, psychiatrist Carol Bennell (Nicole Kidman), sees the same behavior in a friend of their son and a patient claims that her husband is no longer her husband. As people all across Washington D.C. become infected and the insidious epidemic spreads, Carol must fight to protect herself and her son, who might just hold the key to stopping the escalating invasion. (From Arrow’s official synopsis)
Post-WWII, Cold War angst produced an enduring legacy of American science fiction and horror films that helped audiences process their fears via fantastical metaphors. Alien invaders became thinly-veiled stand-ins for Communist aggressors (or sometimes McCarthyist stooges), best exemplified by Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). Based on the novel by Jack Finney (serialized in 1954 for Collier’s Magazine), Invasion of the Body Snatchers paints a bleak, apocalyptic picture of an alien race sent to replace humanity with a single-minded population. Unlike other malevolent space invaders of the period, the ‘pod people’ don’t mindlessly destroy monuments, decimate the military, or leave scorched corpses in their wake. Their infiltration is subdued, their victims die peacefully in their sleep, and, when discovered, they calmly, dispassionately explain their genocidal purpose. They are terrifying, because they are indifferent.
Historical impetus aside, Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ themes were evergreen and became a defining piece of Americana, as well as a template for socio-political sci-fi/horror and stolen identity movies going forward, including a series of name-brand remakes – each of which tweaked the formula to fit the social malaise of a given era. The best of them, Philip Kaufman’s 1978 version, cast post-counterculture hippies as the victims of their own apathy. Abel Ferrara’s 1993 Body Snatchers relocated the story to a remote military base and recast the main protagonist as an EPA agent, thus tapping into early ‘90s fears of ozone holes and unrequited wars with Iraq.
9/11-addled audiences were primed for a post-millennial reboot when German director Oliver Hirschbiegel, fresh off of his multi-award-winning historical drama Downfall (2004), was hired to shoot a screenplay from future writer/producer of The Terror television series(2018), David Kajganich. Unfortunately, studio executives didn’t like Hirschbiegel's final 2005 cut and The Invasion, as it came to be called, spent nearly two years in post-production hell. First, the Wachowskis were hired to do rewrites and supervise reshoots, and they brought on their former second unit director, James McTeigue, himself hot off of V for Vendetta (2005). Star Nicole Kidman was also injured during the reshoots.
When it was finally released, The Invasion (2007) felt incomplete, sanitized, and squeezed to death by aggressive editing. It was dismissed by critics and only made back about half of its production budget. But was it genuinely bad or just messy and not up to the impossible standard of Siegel and Kaufman’s films? Taking into account all of the behind-the-scenes troubles, The Invasion is a largely thoughtful and engaging adaptation. The McTeigue-directed action is merely serviceable, but Hirschbiegel’s patently chilly, largely handheld technical approach produces some unbearably suspenseful sequences, driving home the inherent paranoia, dread, and apocalyptic sentiment.
Kajganich’s screenplay makes some clever changes to the Body Snatcher formula, mainly the idea that people are infected by spores and will turn into pod people the moment they fall asleep, upping the ante and streamlining the original concept, in which an alien seed pod would need to be nearby to facilitate the titular body snatching. The main protagonist is also a psychologist, building on and inverting the 1978 version’s mistrust of pop-psychology and implying that a medically trained mental health professional would have an advantage recognizing and diagnosing pod people. The Invasion also flirts with a smart domestic abuse analogy, perhaps drawn from Gene Fowler Jr.’s I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) – a surprisingly potent dramatic thriller, despite its silly title.
If anything, it’s not comparisons to earlier Body Snatcher movies that holds The Invasion back, but comparisons to the other studio-backed, 9/11-flavored Cold War era sci-fi remake – Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (2005). War of the Worlds also suffers from an awkward script and irritating tonal shifts, but delivers on the aesthetic refinement, thematic drive, and genuine thrills Hirschbiegel & McTeigue’s film cannot. It is one of, if not the scariest science fiction action movie of its generation.
Spielberg’s successes also highlight the weakness of The Inavsion’s political metaphor. This is the only official adaptation to have literal foreign diplomats as major characters and it was released at the end of George W. Bush's presidency, when even politically neutral audiences were suffering War on Terror fatigue and it doesn’t live up to that potential. Politics are background noise and only hint at the better movie that might have been. I especially enjoy the morally challenging indication that pod people are able to achieve world peace in a matter of days and, thus, might be the preferred status quo.
It’s possible that studio interference muted any biting social commentary and I have to admit that the lack of specific Bush-era references stings a lot less nearly two decades after the fact. Given all of its good ideas, which include stealing a key plotpoint from War of the Worlds (that the aliens can’t contend with human viruses), it’s probably not worth dwelling on what might have been, especially since The Invasion ended up being eerily relevant to the post-COVID-19 world…
Video
The Invasion originally saw release on DVD, Blu-ray, and the almighty HD-DVD. I’m a little surprised that there’s never been an extended or director’s cut edition, but I suppose it didn’t do great business and most of the bridges between the studio and creative staff might have been burned. Arrow doesn’t refer to their 4K UHD transfer as a new scan, which is possibly important, because, though it was shot on 35mm film, the original digital intermediate that they’re seemingly reusing was scanned in 2K. This means that the 2160p transfer is technically an upgrade of a 2K source. The image is then improved with additional HDR10/Dolby Vision upgrades. The aspect ratio has also been slightly changed to 1.85:1, instead of the 1.78:1 of previous releases.
The images on this page are taken from the older Blu-ray and not representative of the detail and dynamic range upgrades or the new aspect ratio. However, the basic look of the film is maintained, especially its cool, almost sickly color grade. The sort of oversharpened quality might be the result of up-converting 2K material, but it’s in-keeping with Rainer Klausmann’s shaky vérité look. There aren’t any notable haloes or compression effects, just a vaguely artificial quality to textures, grain, and hard edges. The HDR boost makes a difference during the daylight and fluorescent-baked scenes, but the transfer does struggle a bit with black levels during the darkest sequences, as it tries to strike a balance between deep blacks and discernible material. Short of a 4K scan of the original negatives – which is likely impossible, given that the movie was almost certainly edited from the 2K intermediate – this is probably the best we can expect from the material.
Audio
The Invasion is presented in uncompressed DTS-HD Master Audio and its original 5.1 sound. This isn’t a particularly bombastic film, but there are some standout bursts of stereo and surround movement, usually during action scenes or scare stings. Dialogue is clear and consistent, in spite of everyone constantly whispering (there’s also a lot of obvious ADR, but we won’t hold that against Arrow) and John Ottman’s moody, largely ambient score springs to life where needed to punctuate the scares.
Extras
Commentary with Andrea Subisati & Alexandra West – In this friendly and consistent new track, Subisati and West, the co-hosts of The Faculty of Horror podcast, explore the larger Body Snatcher canon, differences between versions, The Invasion’s specific themes, and the production backstory, all while praising the cast and doing their best to find the good in what they admit is a very messy film.
Body Snatchers and Beyond (23:53, HD) – Critic and author of The Giallo Canvas: Art, Excess and Horror Cinema (McFarland, 2021) Alexandra Heller Nicholas discusses the history of official Invasion of the Body Snatchers adaptations, similar films/rip-offs, and the metaphorical malleability of the original story’s themes. Curiously, she has access to HD footage from Ferrara’s Body Snatchers, but not the other two previous adaptations, making me wonder if Arrow is planning a release of that film as well.
That Bug That's Going Around (16:17, HD) – Critic and broadcaster Josh Nelson wraps up the new Arrow exclusives with a look at outbreak movies and how The Invasion, in particular, ended up accurately foreseeing so many specifics of the COVID-19 pandemic.
2007 archival extras:
We've Been Snatched Before (18:56, HD) – Experts, authors, and the cast & crew discuss the Invasion of the Body Snatchers lineage and the real-world implications of a major viral outbreak.
Three-part behind-the-scenes EPK – The Invasion: A New Story (2:45, HD), The Invasion: On the Set (3:20, HD), and Invasion: Snatched (3:11, HD).
Theatrical trailer
Image gallery
The images on this page are taken from Warner Bros.' original Blu-ray – NOT Arrow’s 4K UHD – and sized for the page. Larger versions can be viewed by clicking the images. Note that there will be some JPG compression.
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