Reseñas de la crítica

How excellent it is, and how ahead of its time, even with the tacked-on bookends and VO. I was watching it and I could sort of see the original, bleaker version THROUGH the re-edit, and it damn well nearly moved me to tears.

Over half a century old, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with its grim stiffness, its small town modesty, the clash of the banal and the absurd, has not lost once frame of its ability to chill. Despite the seeming irrelevance of the generic Communist allegory driving it forward, its fear is still palpable, its swallowed panic infectious, and its America far in period but not in mindset of ours today.

Now here's a proper scarer, still potent after nearly 60 years. Don Siegel's science-fiction chiller deserves its classic status, with its tale of alien replicas hatching out of pods and replacing small-town Californians. There are several reasons for the film's success: taut direction, the lack of overtly weird effects and atmospherics, Kevin McCarthy's authoritative lead, and a magnificently ambivalent ending (given a grimmer tweak in Philip Kaufman's 1978 version, the best of three remakes).

Though Corman-esque in its production design, politics and snappy 80-minute runtime, there's an eerie artistry to Siegel's vision of smalltown communal life. The question mark which nestles behind the drama for much of second half is, would it really be so bad or so different if we had our individuality taken away from us? Are these lives interesting enough for anyone to really notice that they're being "destroyed"? Are they even being destroyed?

Siegel's strictly no-nonsense style only heightens the impact of those moments when he allows for visual poetry. Who can forget the image of Miles and Becky lying side by side underneath the boards as their pursuers search for them, or the terrible epiphany only moments later when the blinding whiteness of Becky's eyes tell Miles that all is lost?