Friday, March 11, 2011

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Film: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) Directed by Philip Kaufman.

This movie was creepy good. Not quite what I expected it to be, which was good. The title lead me to believe that it would be about aliens but thankfully it wasn't (kinda). The actual body snatchers came from outer-space but it was the government who was in control of it all. Once again, big brother just can't keep his hands off our lives. :) 

And also the generic story of humans not being able to escape the "monster", and it's great. Not only can the characters escape from the snatchers in the town they are living in but the "disease" is also being transported on boats out of the city which implies that the government is spreading it all over the country. Nowhere to run to! At first I was a little sad when I saw that the two main characters were going to escape on a ship. But all was restored when I witnessed the crate of creepy pods were being loaded on that ship. After that moment I knew the younger looking Donald Sutherland would have to become one of the emotionless zombie people walking around (Spoiler Alert!: he did.).

I really liked how the "alien" in this film wasn't really an alien and how the government was trying to take over people. It gave a new idea to the alien type film. Instead of the aliens being hostile towards us, "Big Brother" was enlisting the help of some unknown plant to take over the world. It makes one think about how much trust to put into our government and how much we should trust them with our lives. 

1 comment:

  1. Danielle,
    Did you see the original of this film as well? It might be interesting to compare the role and nature of the alien in the two films. The original is really a Cold War film that engages with fears about Communism and fears about conformity in 1950s America. It would be interesting to think about how the alien changed in the 1970s and how that might reflect changes in American culture. Try to go a little deeper and ask yourself some tough questions about the social ramifications or arguments of these films.

    ReplyDelete