Body Snatchers (1993) - Third Snatchers-adaptation is a piece of mediocre Ferrara

♥♥♥

+ Worst Movie of the Year

Evocative, stylish poster for Abel Ferrara's Body Snatchers

QUICK REVIEW:

The man of a family is a chemist with a new job in a military base in the Alabama countryside. Here a foreign life form is overtaking human bodies as worms through noses etc. and making them into a conform, efficient race ...
This basic idea, which is a loose adaptation of a 1955 novel by Jack Finney, which has already been made into two movies (in 1956 and 1978), is still wildly anxiety-provoking. But unfortunately, Body Snatchers is not a super-successful reinterpretation, (and apparently the least loyal to the novel of the three.)
The first half depends too much upon the acting performance of a small boy, who is no good. The photography is ugly and by Yugoslavian DP Bojan Bazelli, who has also shot other dubious films such as The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010). Not until the end do we get something that impresses, and that is giant explosions.
However, the film does have an awesome, intense scene with R. Lee Ermey (Full Metal Jacket (1987)) and Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland (2006)).
The famous Bronxite director of Body Snatchers, Abel Ferrara (Bad Lieutenant (1992)) has put out both memorable (Driller Killer (1979), Ms. 45 (1981)), truly great (Lieutenant) and forgettable (King of New York (1990)) movies; he is busy now finishing Welcome to New York (2014) about the Dominic Strauss Kahn IMF-scandal a few years back and is also filming his next, Pasolini (2014) about the wild, Italian filmmaker, with Willem Dafoe in the title lead. Both highly interesting project.
Body Snatchers was actually in competition in Cannes and was hailed with a top rating of 4 hearts by notorious horror-novice 'guru', the now late Roger Ebert, but was more or less 'thrown out' by its distributor, Warner Bros, who perhaps saw it for what it was; mediocre.

Related posts:

Abel Ferrara: 1993 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

Bad Lieutenant (1992) or, World of Hurt

Watch the film's unexciting trailer here

Budget: 13 mil. $
Box office: 0.4 mil. $
= Huge flop

What do you think of Ferrara's Body Snatchers?
How do you rate it compared to the other versions?