Body Snatchers 4K 1993 Ultra HD 2160p

In another retelling of the story by Jack Finney, Marti Malone's traveling with her dad on holiday. At a gas station, a soldier tells her to not sleep, because 'they' get you when you sleep. Once in the base, she and her father see people acting odd, and soon realise they're aliens.

User Review

15 years after the release of Philip Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, director Abel Ferrara made his own—the third—film adaptation of Jack Finney’s novel of the same name, which tells the story of aliens who clone humans while they sleep.

Unlike the first two films, which were popular with audiences and are now rightly considered classics of science fiction, Ferrara’s version did not gain much popularity—audiences at test screenings did not like the film, and Warner Bros. decided, just to be on the safe side, not to release it to a wide audience (though, strange as it may seem, the film was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes at the time).

It’s worth noting right away that while the classic *Invasion of the Body Snatchers* focused on psychology, the development of relationships between characters, and building an atmosphere of fear and paranoia, Ferrara’s version is more like a typical horror movie with bits of action thrown in. There are no longer any political allusions; the action has been moved from the city to an American military base, and the protagonist is no longer a doctor but his underage daughter (which is also a hallmark of the genre). This transformation has led to a number of problems, one of which is a disjointed plot (to be honest, while watching, you sometimes get the impression that the film was heavily “edited down” during post-production).

A number of plotlines are merely touched upon but never developed—neither the subplot involving the major played by Forest Whitaker, who begins to suspect something is amiss, nor the subplot involving chemical weapons (and how they’re connected to the aliens), which the heroine’s father has come to inspect, nor the subplot involving some armed men who simply appear out of nowhere and distract the aliens, giving the heroes a chance to escape. While the first film explained how the aliens arrived on Earth, and the second even showed the process, here the reasons for and location of their arrival remain a mystery. Furthermore, the decision to include the heroine’s voice-over was not entirely successful—in my opinion, it detracts from the film’s overall atmosphere.

Another weak point in the plot is the ending. A distinctive feature of the previous films was that their characters were ordinary people who had no way of preventing the coming apocalypse on their own—they could only try to warn the authorities about it. This set them apart from other films in the genre, and that’s why they were loved. Here, however, thanks to the director’s efforts, the heroes—having gotten their hands on modern military equipment—wreak complete havoc on a massive military base, which, first of all, runs counter to that very idea, and second, makes the whole spectacle seem rather illogical. The finale itself comes across as overly contrived—it lacks both the elegance of Siegel’s ending and the uncompromising nature of Kaufman’s film.

Unfortunately, the film’s short runtime didn’t allow the actors to move beyond stereotypical roles, such as the handsome helicopter pilot, the rebellious teenage girl, the loving father, and the little boy... Of all the actors, the only truly memorable ones are Meg Tilly (who looked surprisingly menacing in a number of scenes) and Forest Whitaker (it’s a shame his role is so small).

Among the film’s strengths are special effects that were quite good for their time (of all the versions of *Invasion of the Body Snatchers*, this one depicts the process of human transformation in the greatest detail and most terrifyingly), and several very atmospheric scenes. Of course, the filmmakers didn’t manage to create an atmosphere of fear and paranoia on screen comparable to Kaufman’s film, but it’s enough to maintain the internal tension and hold the audience’s attention.

Bottom Line: A rather uneven film that, in many respects, falls far short of its predecessors. The poorly thought-out screenplay, short runtime, and genre shift definitely did not serve the core concept well.

For fans of the first two films, *Body Snatchers* is unlikely to elicit much enthusiasm; for most of those unfamiliar with the originals, the film will most likely fall into the “one-time horror flick” category. In any case, despite all its flaws, Ferrara’s *Body Snatchers* is definitely a better watch than the recent *Invasion* starring Nicole Kidman.

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (87.8 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Info Audio

#English: FLAC 2.0
#English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
#Spanish: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
#Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0
#German: Dolby Digital 2.0
#French: Dolby Digital 2.0
#Italian: Dolby Digital 2.0

Info Subtitles

English SDH (PGS), Bulgarian, Chinese (Hong Kong / Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French (Metropolitan), French (Metropolitan) (PGS), German (PGS), Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (Brazilian) (PGS), Portuguese (European), Russian, Slovenian, Spanish (Castilian) (PGS), Spanish (Latin American), Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian.