Nicole Kidman's character struggles to stay awake -- as will the audience.
The Invasion (2007)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:154
Fresh:30
Rotten:124
Average Rating:4.3/10
Consensus: The Invasion is slickly made, but it lacks psychological insight and thrills.
Rated: 15 [See Full Rating] for violence, disturbing images and terror.
Runtime: 1 hr 39 mins
Genre: Horror/Suspense
Theatrical Release:12-10-2007
Synopsis: Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman ("The Hours") and Daniel Craig ("Casino Royale") star in the science fiction action thriller "The Invasion," a nightmarish journey into a world where the only way... Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman ("The Hours") and Daniel Craig ("Casino Royale") star in the science fiction action thriller "The Invasion," a nightmarish journey into a world where the only way to stay alive is to stay awake. The mysterious crash of the space shuttle leads to the terrifying discovery that there is something alien within the wreckage. Those who come in contact with it are changing in ominous and inexplicable ways. Soon Washington, DC psychiatrist Carol Bennell (Nicole Kidman) and her friend, Dr. Ben Driscoll (Daniel Craig), learn the shocking truth about the growing extraterrestrial epidemic: it attacks its victims while they sleep, leaving them physically unchanged but strangely unfeeling and inhuman. As the infection spreads, more and more people are altered and it becomes impossible to know who can be trusted. Now Carol's only hope is to stay awake long enough to find her young son, who may hold the key to stopping the devastating invasion. "The Invasion" also stars Jeremy Northam ("The Tudors," "Gosford Park") and Jeffrey Wright ("Casino Royale," "Angels in America"). The film is directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel ("Downfall") from a screenplay by David Kajganich, based on the novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney. Joel Silver (the "Matrix" trilogy) produced the film, with Roy Lee, Doug Davison, Susan Downey, Steve Richards, Ronald G. Smith and Bruce Berman executive producing. The behind-the-scenes creative team was lead by director of photography Rainer Klausmann, production designer Jack Fisk, editors Joel Negron and Hans Funck, costume designer Jacqueline West and composer John Ottman. "The Invasion" is a Warner Bros. Pictures presentation, in association with Village Roadshow Pictures, of a Silver Pictures Production, in association with Vertigo Entertainment. "The Invasion" has been rated PG-13 by the MPAA for "violence, disturbing images and terror." --© Warner Bros. [More]
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Jeremy Northam, Jackson Bond
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Jeremy Northam, Jackson Bond, Roger Rees, Jeffrey Wright, Susan Floyd, John M. Jackson, Josef Sommer, Robert Stanton, Celia Weston, Jeff Wincott
Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Screenwriter: Dave Kajganich
Producer: Joel Silver
Composer: John Ottman
Studio: Warner Bros.
Reviews for The Invasion
Next time the aliens come invading, they may want to pass the brains, hold the lecture.
A frantic mess that opens with a scene plucked from the film's third act that smacks of having been moved up to pacify audiences too restless for a slow build.
We'll have to wait until the inevitable director's cut DVD to find out what Hirschbiegel really wanted to say. It would have to be a whole lot more interesting than this accidental agit-prop, which equates pacifism with mindlessness.
The Invasion connects on a gut level in two ways, political and existential.
Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig are adequate leads, but no great actor will be more squandered this year than Jeffrey Wright, who does nothing but speak in vast paragraph blocks of exposition while looking haggard and bored.
The Invasion has a few things to offer both summer-movie audiences and more thoughtful film buffs.
The elegant presence of Kidman and Craig helps ease the inanities of the script.
Resistance is futile -- unless your screenplay can offer pat, absurd plot turns.
It might have been nice to see Hirschbiegel's original concept play out. As it is, the film's essential eeriness gets mashed into Hollywood hogwash.
There have been two official remakes of Invasion, and both tapped into the original's fear and dread of a society subverted by the others. This one taps only into that part of the brain that shuts down when confronted with witless tedium.
If you're familiar with the earlier films, The Invasion is even less satisfying.
The movie offers plenty of smarts and imaginative distractions to counter the stacking of improbabilities.
[It] may not be a patch on the original, but it does have a few things the other versions lack: a nonstop lurching pace propelled by jump cuts and flash-forwards, Nicole Kidman as the hero... and a bitter kind of satiric irony leaking around the edges.
In the way that certain baseball games become pitchers’ duels, some movies are cutting-room battles.
This movie is too impatient and out of it to express either what makes humans individual or what makes them part of a community in the new millennium.
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