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Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig star in this latest re-telling of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Kidman is a psychiatrist whose husband starts acting peculiarly. She also recognizes strange behavior in her patients and the people on the street. Eventually, with the help of Craig’s doctor character and a scientist played by Jeffrey Wright (TV’s Westworld), she discovers an epidemic has taken root across the world that transforms emotional human beings into stoic vessels for an alien hive mind. As the shit hits the fan and the world starts speeding toward hell in a hand basket, all Kidman wants to do is find her young son, who appears to be immune to the infection and the key to its eradication.

The problem with The Invasion is that it’s been done lots of times before, and done better every time. This 2007 version is far less creepy and paranoid than the 1956 one and less horrific and atmospheric than the 1978 one. Director Oliver Hirschbiegel seems to want this version to be more of an action film than a sci-fi or horror film. But as an action movie, The Invasion is a hack job that flits from one scene to the next like a protracted trailer instead of a feature film. Peculiarly, some scenes that would normally play one after the other are even cross-cut with one another, perhaps in an attempt to cut down the run time? Craig’s character has no bearing on the movie — he’s little more than window dressing. And most to the film’s detriment is the kid character. The notion of immunity and a cure evaporates any dread from the final act of the movie. What we’re left with is a case of snatching indeed: someone snatched a perfectly good horror/sci-fi story and replaced it with a direct-to-video Stephen Baldwin movie. With Jeremy Northam, Celia Weston, and Veronica Cartwright (who costarred in the 1978 version).