Body Snatchers (1994)

Director Abel Ferrara (BAD LIEUTENANT) brings his usual blend of brilliance, sex, and brutality to this paranoid sci-fi tale. Gabrielle Anwar stars as Marti, a teenager who moves to a remote southern military base with her EPA inspector father (Terry Kinney), stepmom (Meg Tilly), and little brother, Andy (Reilly Murphy). To say poor Marti finds life on the base strange is a pretty drastic understatement; before she can even unpack her bags, alien pods start replacing her friends and family with dehumanized replicas. A pod even tries to get her when she's taking a bath. Through it all, Ferrara's surreal, off-kilter direction creates a creepy mood out of ordinary blank landscapes and expressions, and the film never lags, creating an ever-mounting storm of menace. The special effects feature some creepily beautiful imagery of human shapes being generated inside the pods. Forest Whitaker, R. Lee Ermey, Billy Wirth, and Christine Elise costar. With a pounding score and entrancing photography by Bojan Bazelli, this fast-moving adaptation should please fans of the genre, regardless of their faithfulness to the 1956 original.