The Invasion - Arrow 4K UHD Limited Edition

There are just some movies that aren’t meant to be. Oliver Hirschbiegel’s English language directorial debut with The Invasion is one of those unfortunate films. Chalk this one up to a studio and producer not trusting its talent. Hot off such excitingly tense, stressful, and exhilarating outings as 2001’s The Experiment and 2008’s famously memeable Downfall, a new post-millennium version of Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers was suitably ripe material for a talent such as Hirchbiegel. Alas, Warner Bros. got cold feet after his initial cut (which was probably too smart and actually good), so the Wachowski siblings were brought in for extensive rewrites while V for Vendetta director James McTeigue took over directing duties. And it’s another Frankenstein’s Monster mess of a final film that embarrassingly bombed badly at the box office. 

Amazingly enough, the film starts out incredibly well. After the destruction of the space shuttle upon reentry, it’s discovered that an alien bacteria has hitched a ride on the wreckage and is growing at an exponential rate. Doctor Carol Bennell (Nicole Kidman) is the first to discover that this microorganism might not be so micro after all as the people closest to her display some startling behavioral changes. With the help of Dr. Ben Driscoll (Daniel Craig), they uncover the startling truth that humans are now host bodies for these organisms to take over and control us. With precious little time, it’s a race to find a way to stop this alien invasion and cure the infected… or something like that anyway. 

Most films by nature follow a simple three-act structure, setup, buildup, and payoff. In the case of The Invasion that three-act structure is: awesome creepy opening with fresh new ideas for the story, clunky mashup original cut/reshoot middle act, and a terrible obnoxious reshoot anti-climatic climax. From the outset, you can feel the strangled marriage of Hirchbiegel’s original material and Team Wachowski’s on-the-nose additions. At first, it was not so bad, maybe the film’s too quick to explain things in case the title didn’t clue what the film was about, but it was working. There was some genuinely exciting new material brought to this old story that stayed true to Finney’s original novel but stood apart from both Invasion of the Body Snatchers films and Abel Ferrara’s underrated Bodysnatchers. 

By the second act when that sense of tension, dread, and suspense should be building up and those creepy hairs on your neck should start standing on their own, The Invasion very quickly starts to fizzle out. Beyond just weirdly incoherent action scenes and confusing hyper-cut edits, these reshoots keep finding ways to needlessly and redundantly overexplain what’s happening. Where there once was rising tension comes a long boring overly wordy slog of needless dialog. Through and through this film feels like the people at the top simply didn’t trust the intelligence of its audience and so they try to distract with smash-cut action scenes. You can practically feel some poor editor stitching this monster together in reel time. It’s also funny you can kind of tell which Daniel Craig scenes were shot before he got the James Bond role and the ones after Casino Royal had finished filming. This film sat on a shelf for so long that Craig could film The Invasion, take the Bond role, train for and shoot that, and then come back to finish this mess for the reshoots. 

Beyond some good, initial ideas, I wish I could say there was something redeemable about this film worth checking out or reevaluating, but in the years since its release, I haven’t found it. I was one of the few who caught this in theaters and have wished for a release of Hirchbiegel’s original cut ever since. Call it mental illness or what have you, but the only reason I own this film is because I have the other three (good) Bodysnatcher films and my collection wouldn’t be “complete” without it. I occasionally pull it out hoping for a better emotional connection or something, anything to change my feelings about it, but that hasn’t happened in 17 years. All I see is missed opportunities to give this story a contemporary post-9/11 update.  

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 
The Invasion infects a new 4K UHD disc from Arrow Video. For this review, we were given a non-retail check disc, but basic disc specs still apply. Pressed on a BD100, retail editions of the disc will come housed in a standard case with identical slipcover, alternate insert artwork, a double-sided poster, and a booklet with new essays.

Per the notes from Arrow, the transfer source was the original 2K DI master file from Warner Brothers. The Invasion was then restored in 4K and graded in Dolby Vision by Arrow. That’s just a fancy long way of saying this is an upscaled transfer with HDR. However, even as an upscale, the improvements are notable and immediate. Some of those improvements may be subjective to which scenes you’re looking at and more importantly, when they were filmed. Overall, facial features looked more detailed, and clothing textures and production design looked a little cleaner and more appreciable over the old Warner Bros. 1080p Blu-ray. I don’t have the Arrow 1080p Blu-ray on hand to compare, but I’d wager it too is a welcome upgrade in that regard. As far as the Dolby Vision grading goes, this film has always had a cool, blue-ish/green tinge to it and that’s retained, I did feel like base primary saturation was much better and more lifelike. Likewise, skin tones were more appealingly healthy and human. Black levels are appropriately deep and inky. The only real downside I’d say is this extra resolution enhancement only highlights the rushed CGI even more than before. A scene near the end with the camera looking at Nicole Kidman through a helicopter window is a laugh-inducing moment. Otherwise, it’s looking pretty good.

The Invasion infests this disc with a DTS-HD MA 5.1 track. The old Warner Bros. disc was presented in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and after doing some disc flippies, I felt there was very little if any difference between the two options. I felt like dialog, scoring, and key action sound effects hit at roughly the same points in the soundscape. Never felt like anything was moved to a different channel or spread differently. As far as an “immersive” experience goes, much of the big action-heavy moments all pile in at the third act. The front end with the shuttle explosion and investigation certainly sparks the surround channels into action, but a lot of the middle moments are conversationally focused with more incidental drifts into the side channels. The score by John Ottman is a nice piece and amps up the moodiness of the endeavor. 

The initial Blu-ray release from Warner Bros was a bit of a bust for bonus features. Given the box office take, it’s not surprising the studio wasn’t too keen on shelling out to produce quality extras. This is an undisputed upgrade for fans or those curious about the film. The Audio Commentary from the Faculty of Horror Podcast hosts is a great listen. The visual essays are interesting looks at the film, even if The Invasion itself may not call for that level of critical analysis. 

• Audio Commentary featuring Faculty of Horror Podcast hosts Andrea Subisati and Alexander West
• Body Snatchers and Beyond (HD 23:53)
• The Bug That’s Going Around (HD 16:17)
• We’ve Been Snatched Before (HD 18:56)
• Behind the Scenes:
• A New Story (HD 2:59)
• On The Set (HD 3:25)
• Snatched (HD 3:17)
• Theatrical Trailer 
• Image Gallery

The final version of The Invasion is a complete misfire. At one point it was likely an intriguing, cerebral, and thoughtful update to Jacky Finney’s science fiction classic. It was probably scary and suspenseful too when it was in the hands of director Oliver Hirschbiegel. I have to believe that's the case anyway. Once Joel Silver and the studio ordered the major overhaul rewrites and reshoots, it became a Wachowski machine. The final product is such a mashup mess of these two very different cinematic sensibilities that really no one should be credited as director when one scene can be so tonally disparate from the next. But still, I keep watching it so somewhere behind all of the disappointment must lurk a fascination with the film in the deep recesses of my being. And to that point, this 4K Dolby Vision upgrade is a worthy successor to the old Warner Bros. 1080p disc. Even upscaled, the improvements in clarity are appreciable and the Dolby Vision grade is equally welcome. Add in some nice bonus features and you have a disc that’s at least Worth A Look