by Jason Daniel Baker

Created on: June 07, 2008

The Invasion (2007) Starring Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Jeremy Northam, Jeffrey Wright, Josef Sommer, Roger Rees, Jeff Wincott, Jackson Bond, Stephanie Berry, Veronica Cartwright, Susan Floyd, Adam LeFevre, Joanna Merlin, Celia Weston, Eric Benjamin, Alexis Raben, Field Blauvelt, Rhonda Overby, Cloie Wyatt Taylor.

Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel.

Running time: 99 minutes.

Rating: PG-13

"All you have to do is nothing. That's all we're asking"

Halloween after a mysterious space shuttle crash in Washington, DC. A severe flu epidemic suddenly breaks out at the same time. But then so do about a thousand other less interesting yet still important things competing for attention in people's daily lives.

Single mom and prosperous psychiatrist Dr.Carol Bennell (Kidman) is presented with continual evidence that people are just not themselves (more like reflections of themselves on an apparent combination of Ritalin and Ecstasy) following the crash. The actress playing the lead character doesn't look completely like herself either. The eyebrows especiallly look bizarre. Movie stars don't do anything the normal way and I guess that very much includes ageing.

Having found alien gunk on her son Oliver's hand after trick or treating Carol takes it in for examination to her doctor boyfriend Ben Driscoll (Craig) and his lab buddy Steven Galeano (Wright). This instead of just dismissing it as part of another brat's Halloween costume or some weird new candy like 99 percent of the rest of parents would and like the other characters initially do.

At first that and everything else does seem easily dismissable particularly when officials come forward (led by Carol's ex-husband portrayed by Northam) and say that all the weirdness is just a really bad flu virus. Damage control is always best when plausible facts fill the vacuum of speculation. In this day and age the least deferential journalists also tend to get reduced to the status of bloggers making it easier than ever for any slick person in a tasteful suit who cultivates TV talking heads to dupe the public.

That is the underlying theme of this version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It is not reflective of the xenophobia of the original 1950s classic nor of the angst of big city living of the 1978 version. This is about sinister forces engaged in a power grab and how detailed the pattern of their deception can be in obtaining it. It is also about how we might fool ourselves into thinking it is not happening or that it won't be so

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