Second remake of Don Siegel's epochal Invasion of the Body Snatchers, sixteen years after the first remake, thirty-eight after the original. Though the theme -- creeping conformity in the form of extraterrestrial "pods" that replicate and replace the bodies of earthlings -- has not in the least become dated, the metaphor is somewhat weakened by relocating the action to a setting of such frank and open and even prideful conformity: a military base in the Deep South. Centering it around an adolescent (Gabrielle Anwar), on the other hand, makes plenty of good sense: age of rebellion, no matter how conformist such rebellion may be. The ways in which the characters might be alerted to the crisis are without exaggeration unlimited, and the ways found here were well worth seeking out: the panicky black man lurking in the shadows of the gas-station restroom ("They're out there ... They get you when you sleep"); the finger-painting class at which all the pupils but the newcomer produce identical images. The eventual turn-off down a Night of the Living Dead avenue -- isolated humans pursued by mobs of zombies -- is a turn-off in more ways than one. Predictable, tiresome, gruesome: that makes at least four ways. And Anwar's nude scene arouses nothing so much as a desire to have a look at her I.D. With Terry Kinney, Meg Tilly, Christine Elise; directed by Abel Ferrera. (1993) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.