Invasion

Starring: Nicole Kidman & Daniel Craig

Directed by: Oliver Hirschbiegel

Rating: I Liked It

Many people have envisioned a perfect world.  A world where the worst aspects of humanity are just a memory, a bad dream, but no one has offered that image up in the way “The Invasion” has. 

From the opening scene to the last few frames of the film, “The Invasion” offers the first great DVD suspense ride of the year.  Very quickly the viewer is thrown into a storyline that unravels at a gripping pace. 

The film begins with a scene taken directly from the middle of movie; then, it starts at the beginning of the story and works its way forward as an alien virus is invading and attempting to conquer humanity.

The virus is transmitted easily, but is not activated until the host is asleep.  Once the host body wakes from this infected sleep, the person is just an emotionless shell of the human they once were.  After discovering what’s happening, Dr. Carol Bennell (Nicole Kidman) must fight desperately to protect her humanity and her son, Oliver (Jackson Bond), with the help of good friend Ben Driscoll (Daniel Craig).

An alien virus is scary enough, but in this case it is amplified by the fact that Dr. Bennell has to stay awake and in many scenes act completely emotionless or become discovered by the infected.  Kidman’s portrayal of a sleep deprived mother protecting her son is very believable and proves that “in the right situation, we are capable of the most terrible crimes”.  Craig and Bond both do an excellent job of keeping up with the high level Kidman sets.

The film is one that offers up something very suspenseful and scary, but its scare tactics are unlike those of most films in the genre.  “The Invasion” is scary because of what it makes the viewer consider about humanity and maybe even about themselves..  The movie doesn’t focus on scary aliens or UFOs, but rather it focuses on an alien invasion in an entirely different light.  

Director Oliver Hirschbiegel does a wonderful job of allowing the underlying message to come to the forefront and enhance the story.  Everyone has imagined a world without crime and violence, but few would probably imagine what other parts of humanity would be lost by separating the thing that causes those horrible actions.

One of the films minor characters presents this logic: to imagine a world where news reports are not filled with violence and war is to “imagine a world where human beings cease to be human.”   Through this scene and line of dialogue, the character presents the overall tone of the film. 

The movie itself offers great action sequences and plenty of “what’s going to happen” moments, but the best part comes when the viewer realizes what the movie is really trying to make one wonder: what would a world without crime, without violence, without war…without emotion really be like?