'Invasion' delivers

By Mina Hochberg | amNewYork Movie Critic

1:40 PM EDT, August 16, 2007

Nicole Kidman stars in this latest spin on "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." (Peter Sorel/Warner Bros.)

Nicole Kidman finally gets to put her immobile face to good use as a survivor in a world where masked emotion is the key to survival. Based on the thrice-adapted 1955 book "The Body Snatchers," "The Invasion" is a forgettable but taut thriller that delivers on suspense and goosebumps.

After a space shuttle explodes over America, pieces of wreckage are flung all over the country, dispersing traces of a malevolent alien lifeform. The extra-terrestrial organism doesn't have a bobble-headed body or hulking mothership. Rather, it exists at a molecular level and destroys by reconfiguring human DNA. Though the infected get to keep their bodies, they become emotionless, stripped of autonomy, basically dead inside. They then assimilate the uninfected by vomiting in their drinks, or when stealth is not an issue, spewing directly onto their face.

As the world transforms into a band of Prozac nations, psychiatrist Carol Bennell (Kidman) sets out to rescue her son Oliver, who she unwittingly left with her infected ex-husband (Jeremy Northam). At her side is Ben (Daniel Craig, demoted from James Bond to the guy who can't crack the friendship barrier). Creepy pods of people cluster on sidewalks, heads turning in sync to follow Carol with their vacant, soulless stares. She quickly learns, as do other survivors, that looking drugged-out and joyless is the only way to pass unnoticed. On top of it all is the insomniac twist -- the alien virus is activated by REM sleep, which means even if you're infected, you can hold onto your soul if you down quarts of Mountain Dew.

Thankfully, the movie doesn't pander too much to the philosophical and political innuendoes from the original story, which was penned in the McCarthy era. For the most part it cuts to the chase; no dilly-dallying with weighty matter that would only go over its head. The movie is formulaic and reductionist, but it's perfect as an end-of-summer thriller.