Remake of a remake that even without context, still manages to terrify in its blunted end-of-worldness. Its predecessors were strung up on real-life uncertainties (communism in the Don Siegal original, late-seventies insecurity in the Philip Kaufman version); bold and analogous, they exploited current social and political unease. Abel Ferrara's Body Snatchers does no such thing – but why should it? Consider that human beings have always had a propensity for harvesting fear from the unknown (those Americans, for a start), and you have the basis for a good horror film. Successfully merge that with creepy shit, like organisms which leech onto you in your sleep and suck the very life out of you whilst giving birth to your clone, and you actually have a scary movie.

Given the state of things (terrorism, mother nature, impending pandemics), Ferrara didn't need a metaphor back then, and he wouldn't have needed one now – seemingly, there's enough anxiety in the world as it is to last filmmakers a lifetime. In the wake of A-horror replicants devoid of mass hysteria, the Body Snatchers triptych also predated the explosion of viral cinema – but did it on an accelerated, apocalyptic scale. So before the copy & paste phenom of grudges and VHS curses, pods from a toxic marsh were being loaded onto trucks for distribution, ready to infect the entire population of the world – not just some unfortunate family in the 'burbs. Ferrara keeps it taut, short and sweet – things deteriorate at fourty-winks – and before you know it, The End is nigh. There are no epilogues.—Tim Wong

» Abel Ferrara | USA | 1993