tags: reality, cinema, cinematic doubles, emotionalism, cinematic imagery
It has been a few years since I saw the most recent interpretation of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the notorious box-office flop The Invasion, starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. But as a result of having seen the 2007 remake, what struck me while I was watching the original film was the way in which the residents of the town were replaced by the pod people. In the recent version, humans are converted to pod people through alien life forms that resemble a disease or an infection – the main character is infected at one point when a pod person spits on her (luckily she doesn’t fall asleep). This difference, while acting as an interesting observation on current paranoia about disease and infection, also serves to emphasize the fact that in the 1956 version, humans are literally replaced by their pod people doubles.
