Sci-Fi Zombie Blog

Both the Invasion of the Body Snatchers and its 2007 remake Inavsion deals with the idea of human identity and how it takes more than memories and acting like a human to be a person. In both films, characters who are related to the invaded refer to them as being that person but not being that person, because "something is missing."

Invasion of the Body snatchers also hints around the fears of communism and how easily Americans in a sleepy town can be taken over.

Invasion deals with a more modern fear of a flu pandemic, replacing the seed pods that previously replaced humans with micro-organisms. This may be because of several events that has taken place over the past fifty years since IOTBS, including the rise of AIDs (spread by the sharing of body fluids, which is how the Invaded infect new hosts), bio-warfare and also the rise and rebirth of the Zombie-horror films (more later).
The film moves on from the fear of communism; this is a reaction experienced in many post-communist Russia films. The James Bond franchise moved on from communist plots to terrorist and crime organisations after the fall of communist Russia, starting in the film Goldeneye.


ZOMBIES

Invasion has several inavded characters that bear resemblence to the famous zombie-genre which was largely defined by Romero in his film Night of the Living Dead.
"Romero's Zombies" as they are known are template zombies; mindless, slow, primitive beings with no emotions. These zombies have been adapted over the decades, particually at the turn of the century with the release of Resident Evil, Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days later and Shaun of the Dead. Modern zombies are typically faster and smarter than their predecessors; in Invasion, there are several scenes that echo the horror franchise. For instance, the scene where Bennell is unconscience in the car and the invaded are trying to break in. This scene where two characters are enclosed is similar to scenes in most zombie films where the characters are surrounded by zombies (for instance, in Dawn of the Dead where the characters are locked inside a shopping mall surrounded by zombies bashing the door, trying to get in).
Also, there are several scenes where the characters are chased by the invaded; this also echoes modern zombie scenes such as in Dawn of the Dead where the zombies chase the lead characters as they escape the mall.

An example of the horror-genre bearing similiarities to Invasion. From Dawn of the Dead, this zombie-crowd scene is similar to the final sequences in Invasion when the lead characters are chased through the streets to escape.