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'The Invasion'

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

BY GENE SEYMOUR | gene.seymour@newsday.com

3:19 PM EDT, August 16, 2007

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Any movie serving up the fourth version of a familiar story isn't expected to shake the planet, much less transform it.

"The Invasion," the latest spin on "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," does a few clever things here and there with Jack Finney's oft-adapted story about vegetation from outer space turning Earthlings into black, soulless shells. But given its shiny surfaces, nouveau-chic grittiness and button-pushing sentimentality, this version feels as if it were made by the kind of beings the first three "Body Snatchers" movies warned us against.

Near the movie's beginning, as one watches Nicole Kidman, as psychiatrist Carol Bennell, stride ramrod-cool and impassive through the streets of Washington, D.C., one is tempted to wonder whether the aliens have already gotten to her.

They haven't yet, but some thistles found on the debris of a shattered Space Shuttle have stung Carol's ex-husband (Jeremy Northam), a creepy Centers for Disease Control official made even creepier by the thing (or things) that takes him over while he's sleeping. (No seed pods this time, folks, but something ickier.)

If you've seen the Don Siegel version of 1956, the Philip Kaufman version of 1978 or the Abel Ferrara version of 1994, you know that when one person catches this, it isn't long before it spreads all over. Carol's naturally chilly restraint crumbles to near hysteria from seeing the streets swarm with blank-faced citizens vomiting in strangers' faces.

She's especially worried that her young son Oliver (Jackson Bond) will catch whatever his father's got - and, after her ex spits on her, what she's got. Only Oliver and two other doctors (Daniel Craig, Jeffrey Wright) have the fortitude to keep Carol from falling asleep and turning into one of ... Them.

Director Oliver Hirshbiegel maintains a dour, murky shroud over the proceedings, though the film's termite-scratching tension eventually is overpowered by the slam-bang of property damage and physical bludgeoning. That's not altogether a bad thing, because Kidman, whose sleekness melds into the movie's own, proves herself an effective action heroine, even when her decorous veneer is waylaid by her character's desperate gulps of Mountain Dew in an effort to keep the adrenaline stoked.

If there's a notable new wrinkle in this "Invasion," it's the surreptitious inquiry into whether total nullity is necessarily a bad thing for humanity, considering that earlier "Invasions" were linked to Cold War hysteria (1956) or "Me Decade" narcissism (1978). But even that's not enough to dispel the feeling that this new "Invasion" is built primarily to fulfill its audience's base appetites for tales of children-in-peril and well-aimed shots to the solar plexus.

THE INVASION (PG-13). Yet another variation on "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" stars Nicole Kidman as a psychiatrist fighting to stay awake after being infected with a space-spawn virus that turns people into numb, soulless beings. With Daniel Craig, Jeremy Northam and Jeffrey Wright. Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. 1:39 (violence, horrific jolts, distressing images). At area theaters.