Invasion of the Body Snatchers

The story of the movie is set in a fictional town of Santa Mira. The movie begins with the introduction of the lead actor, whom the government agencies see as a mentally retarded person and detain him. Then, the doctor – Dr. Binnell narrates the story.

 

Dr. Binnell returns from a medical convention after his nurse asks him to urgently come back to his clinic after a large number of patients turn up at his clinic. Most of them accuse their loved ones of being imposters. Soon, the doctor’s love from his past too turns up at his clinic asking him to help her cousin, who accuses her father of being an imposter.

 

A psychiatrist – Dr. Dan Kaufman then informs Dr. Binnell that the cases are nothing but ‘epidemic mass hysteria’. But, Dr. Binnell still has a strange feeling of something going wrong in the town. He then soon discovers a strange body on a pool table at his friend-Jack Belicec’s house, which he thinks has some resemblance with his friend. When Jack falls asleep sitting, the body comes to life and seeing the body coming to life Jack and his wife get frightened and rush to Dr. Binnell’s house. But, when Jack and Dr. Binnell go back to Jack’s house, they find that the body has disappeared, leave behind a blood mark on the table. Then Dr. Binnell finds a similar kind of body in the basement of Becky’s house.  Then slowly the doctor’s realizes that the people of the town are slowly being replaced by some bot kind of things, which evolve from plantlike pods and later take over the person’s memory and life, when he sleeps. But, the movie doesn’t talk about the disposing of bodies of actual people.

 

Dr. Binnell and Becky keep running away from the bots, which he assumes that the aliens have planted on this planet. But, unfortunately Becky too falls prey to the alien’s plot, and gets converted into a bot, whom Dr. Binnell abandon’s and runs to the highway shouting for help, from where he gets detained by the law enforcement authorities. They believe in his story, only when they find a truck full of the plantlike pods.

 

The “bot people” in this film don’t act like the controlled zombies you would expect them to be, except in the group scenes. Taken one by one, they just seem to be bad tempered. Often they act quite human. More consistency for “bot people” behavior would have been an improvement, as well as greater contrast in personalities between those converted and those still alive.

 

The movie being a sci-fi flick still has a love sub plot, which brings several questions to the viewers mind. Why can’t be Becky and Dr. Binnell be shown as happily married couple, rather than being shown as long lost lovers? Also questions like What if the people closest to you were suddenly different. What if they had some secret and evil plan? What if they wanted you to join them, even against your will?