Abel Ferrara teamed with B-horror legends Larry Cohen (who co-conceived the story) and Stuart Gordon (who co-wrote the script) for Body Snatchers, a second remake of Don Siegel’s 1956 classic about extraterrestrials’ plans to conquer the planet via the creation of pod people. Yet despite its seemingly can’t-miss creative trio, the film turned out to be little more than a mildly evocative sci-fi thriller without much in the way of an idiosyncratic identity, lacking both Ferrara’s signature directorial flourishes as well as the pulsating allegorical depth of Siegel’s original and Philip Kaufman’s gorgeous 1978 version. Nonetheless, if incapable of fully fleshing out its invasion-at-a-military-base plot’s thematic undercurrents about the dangers of conformity, this economical horror show still offers a few stunning moments of paranoia-laced terror: a young boy discovering that his day care classmates are less interested in drawing butterflies than in making identical pictures of splotchy red tendons; army recruits mechanically navigating an obstacle course during a crimson sunset; and a transformed Meg Tilly, after realizing her family won’t succumb to their inevitably inhuman fate, letting loose with a shrieking call to alien arms.
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