The Invasion

For fans of the genre, The Invasion offers a decent dose of spookiness with the still beautiful Nicole Kidman. Casting Daniel Craig as the male lead was a bit strange, but interesting. The biggest failing of the movie is its unoriginal script, which just recycles what we’ve seen in all those “invasions of body snatchers” and The X-Files, without throwing anything original into the mix. On the other hand, I wasn’t bored for a single second. Of course, Spielberg’s War of the Worlds is more exciting and powerful, but The Invasion doesn’t lack some decent tension. This tension is doled out gradually, in a more intimate way and with more subtle emotional nuances. (19.10.2007)

Decent as a thriller, but doesn’t work at all as horror. The effect of having two directors is markedly clear and I think the result is weaker than either a fully slow or fully fast treatment would have been. Kidman and Craig deliver good but not great or memorable performances. Spoiler: the criticism about the real human population is interesting, but it could have been worked better, for instance, that people remembered their healing and weren’t grateful to their “rescuers” – that would have been a lot more striking. End of spoiler. Interlacing dialogues with flash forwards of events to come is such a weird idea that I’m grateful they didn’t use it more than a couple of times in the entire film… 60% (30.01.2008)

Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig are certainly not the ideal dream couple, although two attempts were made. Besides, it's a shame to cast Kidman in action movies. But in terms of being average, The Invasion can be tolerated. It's nothing we haven't seen many times before, but why bother despising a relaxing genre? There's going to be another version of this so enough anyway. (04.02.2009)

A slightly unfortunate combination of two creative approaches that allow neither for a full connection to the psychological level of the premise, nor for the film to be a gripping dark thriller. The material, however, is promising; there are parts where the film irradiates hopelessness and we root for the female lead, but the last act only telegraphs the main ideas of the story, which can’t develop in an interesting way and ultimately lead to a trivial finale. The previous versions managed to give this smart material a far more subtle and distinctive touch. (24.09.2019)

This is a new version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," respectively an adaptation of the book by Jack Finney. I have to say that I really like both previous films (from 1956 and 1978), and I like the concept in both of them, where you can really feel that something is happening, and it also transfers to the viewer. With the latest film, I simply didn't have that feeling, and instead, I had the feeling that it was just an average thriller where Nicole Kidman doesn't excel too much. She only has a nice shot of her behind in some scenes. This shouldn't be the main idea that a person takes away from such a film. (31.03.2014)