The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Body Snatchers (at least in the usage on this site) refers to non-human entities that steal human appearance. They can create identical duplicates of the human body, take over control of human minds or else this can be a form of Alien Possession. The key aspect of this is body snatchers replicate every aspect of humanity except for emotions.
Body snatchers appeared in a number of other classic works of the 1950s Alien Invasion film beginning with It Came from Outer Space (1953) and others of era, culminating in the key paranoia classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).
The theme has regularly reappeared ever since then. Most commonly, body snatchers are alien invaders. In other variations, they can be Android duplicates, Parasites, plants or some form of Doppelganger or the idea of the changeling. Another variant on the theme is of the creature that hops between bodies, discarding one as its use runs out.
Historically, body snatchers is also a term given to those who rob graves, another recurrent theme in genre material. To avoid confusion, these are listed here as Grave Robbers.
Norwegian comedy where two friends who were a champion laser tag duo in their teens are now in adult life where they are forced to pair back up to fight off alien invaders
This was the second of the films spun off from the 2000s Battlestar Galactica revival series, and ingeniously retells the events of the series as seen through the eyes of the Cylons
Mini-series that reconstructs the old Battlestar Galactica into smart and intelligent SF with strong characters, a gritty realism and sensational effects. A tv series followed and became one of the best SF shows of the 2000s
The success of Star Wars saw a host of copies made over the next few years. This was one of several low-budget Italian space opera knockoffs of this period, featuring invading aliens from Ganymede
The Asylum’s mockbuster take on Avatar: The Way of Water, which ingeniously exploits the fact that Saturn has a moon called Pandora. The rest is a low-budget body snatchers film
Animated film featuring a team-up between the sons of Batman and Superman, which ends up being far more fun than you expect
Charlize Theron becomes paranoid and suspects her space shuttle astronaut husband Johnny Depp of returning possessed by an alien. Essentially an SF version of Rosemary’s Baby
A body snatchers film, shot partially as Found Footage where teens shooting a video make the discovery that people in their town are being replaced
An alien invasion and takeover film that was clearly inspired by the success of tv’s The X Files. This is a smart effort that emerges as something unworldly in David Twohy’s hands
In a similar vein to James Wan’s Malignant, a film with a heroine who has a malignant twin force its way out of a wound in her side and proceed to take over her life
Clever and well made Found Footage film about a NASA crew encountering something alien on The Moon’s surface. Falls somewhere between Alien, Apollo 13 and Paranormal Activity
A wendigo film, this comes with impressive prospect and backed by no less names than Guillermo Del Toro and David S. Goyer
Alex Garland’s second directorial effort after Ex Machina. Clearly influenced by Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, this features a group venturing into an alien-affected zone where Garland does a fine job of creating a sense of the otherworldly
The second part of the Korean time-hopping/alien invasion film where many of the plot strands from the extremely confusing first film are at least wrapped up
A South Korean SF film that comes with a wide canvas involving alien invasion, time hopping between two eras and some epic action in possibly one of the most head-scratching plots seen in some time
Low-budget British alien invasion film shot in a hyperkinetic style using as many social collapse cliches as possible. Jean-Claude Van Damme turns up to deliver explanations for everything
Homage to 1950s SF films, in particular It Came from Outer Space and The Blob, made not as a parody but as an affectionate tribute to the era with everything played seriously
An early film from The Asylum set in a hospital for alien abductees, which director Eric Forsberg evokes with some paranoia and a great ending