ehhh

Abel Ferrara’s “Body Snatchers” was a change of pace for the director, known for such gritty New York crime dramas as “King of New York” and “Bad Lieutenant”. “Body Snatchers” would be the third iteration of the story about a race of aliens turning humans into hive-mind pod people, yet it seems to have come and gone without much fuss. Watching it, you can kinda tell why it was only dumped on 12 screens upon release.


His version has a main character in Marti (Gabrielle Anwar), a teen girl forced to move to an army base with her family. Her dad (Terry Kinney) is a consultant with the EPA investigating chemicals found on the base, which may be contributing to some odd behavior amongst the soldiers. The Chief Medical Officer (Forest Whittaker) even wonders about the, unlikely, psychological effects of such chemicals.


But there is a lot of oddness going on. The soldiers are afraid to sleep, the school children are painting the same disturbing image, and pods seem to be getting pulled out of the lake in great number. Marti also realizes something is going on, as the same man who accosted her early in the film, telling her not to sleep because “they’re out there”, also winds up appearing again, not only on the base, but considerably less agitated now.


There is one very creepy effect here and that is of what comes out of the pods. These spindly, spaghetti-like tendrils emerge from them and snake their way up noses and other open pathways toward the brain. They drain the life of their human prey, getting to the point where the human seems to collapse in on themselves and turn to dust, allowing the pod to then take the place of their prey.


That nearly every character here is an emotionless pod doesn’t allow for great moments in character but some of the performances are fun to watch. Meg Tilly takes top prize for her chilly turn as Marti’s step mom, who becomes the first in the family to turn pod. Whittaker turns his paranoid character up to an 11, and R. Lee Ermey is dead-eyed perfection as the head of the base.

But setting the film on an army base seems to forego a lot of the paranoia. When Marti complains that no one believes her, it never feels like it’s because people don’t believe her, but rather it’s that nearly everyone else has already turned.

The teen angst storyline of Marti being upset with dad, hating stepmom, and playing the same sad song over and over again feels more derivative than it does a good point about rejecting conformity. Anwar is a pretty girl, which Ferrara utilizes in one great nude scene, but she also kinda feels lethargic, as does romantic co-star Billy Wirth. I kept wondering throughout the film, particularly of him, if he had also been turned or is that just his acting?

Some of the mayhem, and especially the effects, are fun to see but it all leads up to not much point, and an ending of more mayhem that features a helicopter scene that looks cheap and ill-refined, almost as though Ferrara had just thrown his hands up at that point. “Body Snatcher” is not a total embarrassment but it also seems to have come from a place more of consternation than inspiration.