What is it with Nicole Kidman and sci-fi remakes? Especially remakes of films about odd behaviour in seemingly normal small towns? Last year it was the surprisingly enjoyably campy The Stepford Wives (my CT Movies review; my B&C; essay). Now, ComingSoon.net reports that she’ll be starring in the upcoming fourth version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
The new film will be directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, the German director who made Das Experiment (2001; my comments), one of the more visceral and unsettling movies I’ve seen in recent years, as well as the Oscar-nominated death-of-Hitler movie Downfall (2004; my review) — so this could be an interesting film.
FWIW, I have never seen Philip Kaufman’s 1978 version or Abel Ferrara’s 1993 version, but I did watch Don Siegel’s 1956 version while preparing a review of Mark Jancovich’s Rational Fears: American horror in the 1950s some years ago. That review is not online, but I did write a few paragraphs about the book — including a few sentences on Siegel’s film — in this article that I wrote around that time on Star Trek: First Contact (1996).
AUG 2 UPDATE: The Hollywood Reporter now says the new film is not a remake any more, and will thus merely be called Invasion.
AUG 18 2006 UPDATE: Just noticed it’s now called The Visiting.
OCT 15 2006 UPDATE: And now it’s The Invasion again.
NOV 13 2006 UPDATE: The Wachowski brothers have reportedly been brought in to do an “emergency rewrite” on the ending.
JAN 25 2007 UPDATE: Nicole Kidman was sent to a hospital after a car crash during filming today. Are they still shooting this?
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In