Merging my horror movie viewing in the lead up to Halloween with my on-going retrospective of director Abel Ferrara’s filmography this year, I thought I would revisit Body Snatchers (1993), his sci-fi horror film for Warner Brothers. If it wasn’t for the later box office bomb of the Nicole Kidman starring The Invasion, this was always seen as the lesser of the movies based on Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers. It still feels like such a curious move, the film that Ferrara made after Bad Lieutenant, even though he’s long had genre movie bona fides in the world of horror (The Driller Killer, Ms. 45, etc); apparently, Ferrara’s also a big fan of the first movie based on the material by director Don Siegel, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. I remember some reviewers criticised the idea of placing the alien invasion – where people are replaced with copies while they sleep – in a military base as a misstep, either too blunt a socio-political point or unnecessary with the dehumanising mode of military training. Yet I still think there is a thematic power to this choice, particularly the idea of American imperialism visited upon itself with soldiers grabbing and escorting other soldiers from their homes to be “snatched” and indoctrinated by the body politic. It’s also told from a youthful perspective from Gabrielle Anwar’s character, feeling alienated from her family with her step mother (Meg Tilly) she feels distant to, wife to her EPA scientist father (Terry Kinney) who is travelling across the country to test the environmental safety of military bases. There are effectively creepy old school special effects, and a great use of framing and perspective to create a continual sense of disorientation and strangeness (cinematography by Bojan Bazelli who also shot China Girl and King Of New York). However, it felt wild to me how the film is mostly a slow dread building development as the characters are mainly unaware of what’s going on around them, the film then hits a point where the pace just goes into chase mode for the remainder of its length, leaving behind some of the more interesting character relationships and plot reveals that have been cooking on the back burner. Best moments are the respective freak-out scenes by Tilly and Forest Whitaker (as a paranoid military doctor), which help convey the thematic ideas while being effectively creepy moments. Ferrara regulars are in session including a score by Joe Delia and a script co-written by Nicholas St. John, working on a story that was already worked on by genre meister Larry Cohen and Stuart Gordon (originally slated to direct the film). A tense if strange and ultimately downbeat anomaly from director Ferrara. Rented on iTunes. Recommended.
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