Body Snatchers

They don't make paranoia like they used to. After all, the two previous versions of the sci-fi classic The Invasion of the Body Snatchers left viewers with the sneaky suspicion that they should double-check the identity of all their friends and relatives.

But the new production, bearing the trimmed-down title of Body Snatchers, isn't even scary enough to make you want to spy on your neighbors. It just doesn't have the juicy fear factor of the earlier movies.

What Body Snatchers does have is a preponderance of foreboding that finally gives way to surprisingly lackluster fits of hysteria. It also offers a vaguely competent performance by Gabrielle Anwar, as a teenager who's trapped on a pod-infested army base with her father (Terry Kinney) and step-brother (Meg Tilly). That's the new twist in this version – the brain-stealing veggies from outer space have taken over the military. But since military intelligence is an oxymoron, who can tell the difference?

Certainly not Anwar's father, who's an inspector for the EPA, and has been sent to the army base to test for toxins in the local water. Despite his presumed expertise on aquatic ecosystems, he never notices that alien seed pods are beginning to hatch in the river by the thousands. He's so out of touch with his own environment that he's hardly aware that most of the troops are acting like zombies. He's even slow on the uptake when his own wife starts behaving oddly.

Not that Anwar is any smarter. She's so busy seething at her step-mother that she doesn't realize that the local MP's are dragging people out of their houses in the middle of the night. She doesn't figure it out until the truth literally comes crashing through her roof.

Forest Whitaker, as an army psychiatrist who goes nuts from his efforts to stay sane, provides the movie's only engaging character.

The first half of Body Snatchers spends too much time warning us that something other-worldly is going on. The second half explains everything too quickly and sets the stage for a final firefight that's neither very exciting nor frightening. The movie is stuck between a pod and a hard place – it's too serious to have any fun with its crazy plot line, but it's incapable of presenting an intelligent, coherent story. Even the central question of who is – and who isn't – human is treated with virtual indifference.