Body Snatchers (1993)

Directed by Abel Ferrara. Starring Gabrielle Anwar, Billy Wirth, Terry Kinney, Meg Tilly, Christine Elise, R. Lee Ermey, Reilly Murphy, Forest Whitaker, Kathleen Doyle, G. Elvis Phillips. [R]

Third cinematic attempt to bring Jack Finney’s horror/sci-fi novel to life is surprisingly bloodless and routine in Ferrara’s hands, with none of the boundary-pushing subversion one would expect (and hope for) from the filmmaker with this classic paranoia-chiller material. The action mostly takes place on a military base, where teenager Anwar and little brother Murphy start suspecting that something’s not right (the audience is way ahead of them). A few unsettling scenes and a satisfactorily ambiguous wrap-up ensure it’s not a complete waste of time, but it too often feels like a commercial product lacking the necessary polish or original hook to set it apart from the previous efforts (the setting is the “freshest” new idea, but it’s not effective in terms of quiet dread since soldiers are so often conditioned into “pod behavior” even without extraterrestrial intervention). The actors don’t rate much with their stock characters, though Tilly nails her made-for-the-trailers declaration: “Where you gonna go? Where you gonna run? Where you gonna hide? Nowhere…‘cause there’s no one like you left.”

48/100