Invasion of the Body Snatchers 4K 1978

"Invasion of the Body Snatchers" by Philip Kaufman is interesting to watch right now - in the days of continuous remakes. When the rethinking of the original paintings was reduced to simple copying and frame-by-frame recreation, Invasion of the 1978 version can pleasantly surprise: it is not so much a remake of Don Siegel's painting as a reimagining and sequel. Moving the action to San Francisco, Kaufman did not deny the events of the original film: somewhere there is the same small town from which it all began. Miles managed to escape, but no one believed his fanatical rushes and convictions.

1978's "Invasion" does not throw out the subtext on the viewer as clearly as the original. The director deliberately does not paint an unambiguous picture of who or what is the allegory of the alien invasion. The subtext is blurred and unclear, inviting the viewer to find the answer to the question himself, and reminding us that Invasion is a movie whose meaning we see exactly as we want to see it.

Kaufman has remarkably done well in building threat, fear, and paranoia over Siegel's film. And here the merit is not so much of the director and wonderful actors who managed to create memorable and reliable images, as of the operator. Michael Chapman deliberately plunged the world into dark colors, filmed many scenes at non-standard angles, played with shadows on various surfaces and showed the crowd as a kind of organism, driven by a single goal, in which there are no individuals.

The remake / sequel can hardly offer anything in terms of the development of the concept of an alien invasion through twins, although Kaufman finally showed in all its glory what happens to the original after the creation of the clone, but the level of paranoia, distrust of others, the scale of what is happening and the general gloom the pictures are vastly superior to Don Siegel's.