Review – Invasion of the Body Snatchers

I was surprised by what a good movie this turned out to be. I know it’s one of the all-time classics of paranoid sci fi, but it’s a solid piece of film-making as well. Without recourse to big-name stars or expensive special effects, director Don Siegel creates a sense of profound wrong-ness using inventive camerawork, dramatic lighting and a reasonably good script. And that’s really all the production needs; the rest of the drama is carried solely by the idea of an alien invasion so subtle it’s almost over before anyone even finds out it’s happening. When you watch, try to imagine the movie without the prologue and the optimistic epilogue, which was Siegel’s original vision for the show. Even 50 years later, the moral is still oddly apt. Worth seeing