If you fall asleep, an alien organism will take over your body challenge!! Today, we
will review The Invasion! It has some shocking twists, so make sure you watch until the end!
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We open up on Carol who is raiding a pharmacy for caffeine pills and chugging soda. She’s
also got a room full of people banging and trying to get out. I really hope we address
that later, because now we just cut to the title screen!
Props to this movie for having an epidemic happen from outer space instead of the usually
random virus that just develops on its own on Earth. Only so many of those are believable,
but space is almost completely unknown. For all we know, every possibility of life is
real up there.
As a space shuttle re enters the atmosphere, it blows up and breaks into separate pieces.
I’m assuming we’ve jumped back in time for a bit, because I doubt that Carol would
be storming a pharmacy if everything was normal. It’s safe to assume that’s a part of the
timeline to look forward to.
Now we meet Kaufman, who works for the CDC. He enters one of the tents that were set up
to investigate an organism that came back to our planet with the crashed space shuttle.
As he leaves, a young girl approaches him with a piece of the space shuttle that the
authorities had missed.
For a film that has been pretty smart about how it’s handling things so far, that feels
like a rookie mistake. At least the alien spores have a quick link to the President
early on though!
Ew! They did a great job with the makeup here, but now I’m just curious as to how the spores
actually affect humans! It’s been maybe a couple hours, and he’s already crusting
over?
Now we cut back over to Carol, who is woken up by her screaming son, Oliver. It turns
out that Kaufman is actually Carol’s ex husband, and there is a custody arrangement
that even infected Kaufman doesn’t like.
After Carol drops Oliver off at school, she hops in the car with her boyfriend, Ben. Who
is played by none other than our James Bond, Daniel Craig! That’s a win already!
Funnily enough, Daniel Craig actually got the phone call about being named the new James
Bond while he was filming this film in Baltimore. He had to leave temporarily to do a press
release for the Bond series.
Once Carol gets to work, we find out that she’s actually a psychiatrist, and her first
appointment is actually a patient who is experiencing the invasion first hand. Her husband is clearly
not himself, but no one knows what is happening.
It’s awesome how this invasion isn’t necessarily a violent overthrow. At least not at first.
They’re just silently infiltrating mankind from inside! That definitely makes it a little
more unsettling.
Why would you open the door then?! Logic dictates that you should just keep the door shut and
talk through the glass, but kudos to the kids for backing up as soon as that dog popped
up. They know candy isn’t worth it!
How?! I mean, the door is left wide open!
As the dog attacks one of Oliver’s friends, the child grabs hold of the dog’s snout
and begins to squeeze, but the owner finally gets the dog off. After they get home, the
kids start to separate candy until Oliver gets a weird slime on his hand.
Ew! I can’t blame Oliver! I’d probably scream like that if that was all of a sudden
slapping it’s moist self to my candy too!
The next morning, Carol brings the slime to Ben at the hospital. Oh yeah. Ben is a doctor
of some sorts. As Ben and his friend, Stephen, analyze the slime, Stephen mentions that samples
like this have recently started popping up all over the country.
Next, we pop back over to Kaufman who is giving a CDC conference about releasing a new vaccine
for a brand new strain of flu that’s just surfaced. As people are asking questions,
the help is doing other things.
Ew! This movie should’ve been a warning about social distancing and spreading of viruses
long before the last couple of years woke people up to it. That is absolutely disgusting,
and I love it in this film!
After an odd morning at work, Carol is driving Oliver to stay with his father for a while.
While they are driving, they are stopped by a crazed woman in the middle of the tunnel.
I’d say there’s a lot wrong with her now! The ones that figure it out first are always
the crazy ones that go first too. That was definitely a great little shock moment in
a movie that has kept you wondering what’s coming next.
After Carol drops Oliver off with Kaufman, she and Ben go to a lovely dinner party that
ends with a stern discussion of not moving too quickly. After Carol gets back to her
house, she puts the kettle on the stove, but she’s interrupted by a knock at the door.
The man tells her he’s with the census, and he has a few questions.
That’s not even a good lie! If he really wanted in, he could’ve said it was an emergency
with Oliver or something like that.
What?! I think that’s what makes this legitimately creepy here. His lack of human empathy or
emotion. Plus the fact that he just doesn’t care. Yeah! She’s right there! So what?!
I’m just going to let myself in.
After she locks the man out, she calls Ben who comes to stay with her. The next morning
on her way to work, Carol constantly passes groups of people who are staring at her emotionlessly.
This is the tension that would put me on constant edge in real life. Imagine a whole car full
of people pulling up next to you to stare at you, then they just drive off. Creepy!
Later on, Stephen contacts Ben and Carol, and he explains that the slime he’s been
analyzing is actually some sort of viral-like entity on it’s own that takes over the human
body and rewrites its genetic expression. This in turn would cause the host to express
themselves as nothing.
It still seems like a peaceful takeover. It seems like they’re just trying to unify
everyone and stop the violence and war. Isn’t that a win after all?
Suddenly, Ben gets a call from his dinner party friends, and the three of them rush
over to their house to see what’s wrong.
Why does it do that?! For a film made in 2007, they did a great job with the textures of
whatever it is I’m looking at. Now I need some explanations!
After Carol disturbs the man with the flash on her phone, he crawls down the hallway and
dies. Suddenly, Carol rushes out of the house and drives over to get Oliver.
I can’t blame her. Her motherly instincts kicked in right at the perfect time. She’s
not waiting around for the whole world to look like a slime ball before she goes and
gets him!
Sure enough, Kaufman has a house full of guests that are all infected, and when she tries
to leave, they block her every exit. Plus, why is this kid never in the house? We’ve
only seen him in this house one time!
Nope! It’s time to dive out that window behind you!
If another character vomits this bile one more time, I’m going to throw up myself.
As Carol escapes the nightmare of a town, she finds herself in the subway. Once on the
subway, her car ends up being full of other people that aren’t infected yet, and they
mention to her that they can fool them by not showing emotions.
Well I could definitely fit right in then! If that’s all I’ve got to do, then consider
me a blank slate!
While they may have told Carol how to feel them, they couldn’t hold it together themselves,
and they end up getting cornered and infected while Carol escapes into the subway maintenance.
Here she finds a gun, and ends up shooting one of the infected.
This really doesn’t seem like a hard world to live in! No war, no fighting, no heartbreak.
What’s the downside?
Oh yeah. Police state and no freedom of expression. I guess it’s a tough choice. What would
you choose?
Carol finds her way back to Ben and the others, and Stephen explains that they can’t fall
asleep. They have no way of knowing whether they’re infected, but the change occurs
during REM sleep.
Umm...I’m pretty sure that Carol is infected. Just in case anyone forgot, Carol got vomited
on! She’s definitely got it.
The group ends up leaving, and they split up into two groups. Stephen and the house
help go to a fort that is working on a cure, while Ben and Carol head to her office to
look up medical records on a patient of hers that they believe could be immune. They quickly
realize that Oliver might also have the same immunity, and they decide to go get him.
Finally! They’ve only been around each other for hours! It’s a good thing they are a
couple that doesn’t really kiss much, otherwise he’d be infected all the same.
That’s what they all say! But you’ve got to give Ben’s character credit for the gumption
that he shows throughout. He never questioned anything, and whenever something new popped
up, he adapted and continued to survive.
As Carol gets on a train to Baltimore to get Oliver, she starts to doze off, but she quickly
pulls herself back awake. When she goes to leave the bathroom, one of Oliver’s friends
is waiting outside the door and calls her bluff. After she convinces him to let her
stay in the bathroom so long as she sleeps, the boy checks on her once they reach Baltimore.
Ew! By the way, she got all of that skin from the trashcan in the bathroom! That’s someone
else’s dead, slimy skin!
It’s definitely quick thinking on Carol’s part, and it in turn gets her an easy way
into the house Kaufman is holding Oliver.
They almost had me there! If they had put even an extra second of a pause there, I would’ve
believed that he really had turned for a second. Well done!
Naturally, this happy moment is short-lived as Oliver’s infected friend walks up behind
them and discovers that Carol has actually been faking it this whole time.
HA HA! Carol just grabbed this little boy and chucked him into a bedpost without any
remorse?! The boy didn’t even say anything or hint that he was going to do anything bad!
Maybe he was just going to ask her what was going on. For all we know, Carol could’ve
easily talked her way out of that situation, but NO! Let’s just get rid of this kid.
She gets points for not hesitating.
Once they reach the ground floor, Kaufman spots them, and they give chase. I have to
give the little boy credit too. He’s outrunning at least five grown adults! This boy could
be an Olympic runner when he grows up!
The two of them hide in a factory, but Kaufman isn’t far behind. He locks them all in,
and tries to coerce them out of hiding by trying to hit a nerve. When that fails, Carol
tries to quietly unwrap the chains on the door, but Kaufman is right there to grab her.
Ok. Oliver should’ve been the main character this whole time! The alien parasite wouldn’t
have made it anywhere if we had just given this kid a pipe in the beginning.
While Kaufman is preoccupied with Oliver, Carol hits him in the head with a hammer,
and they run across the street to the pharmacy. Once Carol finds something that will help
keep her awake, she explains to Oliver that he might need to give her a shot in her heart.
She wants this little boy to give her an adrenaline shot?! Well, if anyone in this whole cast
could do it without being scared, it’s definitely Oliver.
As they wait for Ben to get to them, Carol goes into the door we saw at the beginning
of the film, and now we know that it’s full of people transforming into the infected.
At least this film gives us ample explanation for everything! It’s nice not to be left
hanging.
Finally, Carol falls asleep. Once Oliver wakes up from his slumber, he searches for Carol
and finds her in a very deep sleep. So what does Oliver do without hesitation?
Oliver seriously is the real hero of this story. Carol probably should’ve warned him
to stay back when she wakes up, because she just gave him shaken baby syndrome like she
just saw a zombie.
Soon after, Ben finally arrives, but he has succumbed to the alien spores. He tries to
reason with Carol about how there is no violence anymore thanks to the collectiveness of the
alien entities, but she isn’t buying it. As Carol and Oliver try to escape, they are
met with strong resistance, but they manage to keep moving.
They get a call from Stephen who is in a helicopter above the city, and he tells them to get to
the Carlson Building so he can land and pick them up.
If he is infected too, I’ll have lost all hope for Carol and Oliver. For some reason,
when they mention that Stephen is in a helicopter, I automatically assumed that that meant he
was clean. Like the infected can’t pilot a helicopter. Maybe I wouldn’t make it through
this after all!
Ok. Stephen is clean. If he’s saying oh no like that, we’re good. For a peaceful
breed of takeover aliens, they sure made molotovs really quickly.
As Carol and Oliver make it to the roof, the infected aren’t far behind her, but they
make it onto the helicopter just in the nick of time.
Once they make it onto the helicopter, we have a time jump that proves everything worked
out just fine. Well...almost. I mean a lot of people did die, but they got a vaccine!
It’s a sad fact, but probably very true. They did a great job of making it feel like
going back to being human wasn’t necessarily the best option, but it was the option we
just wanted. Even the characters in the movie seem reluctant to return to normal.
Carol is also back to normal. She and Oliver are safe at home where they have adopted Oliver's
friend, and even Ben is home. Thanks to the virus, no one that was infected has any memory
of what happened while they were infected so it’s just another good day for them.
And with that, we cut to the credits. This was an absolutely fantastic film that I had
never heard about until I watched it just now. With everything going on, it’s the
perfect film to watch and see if you think life would be better as a unified alien nation.
Thank you so much for watching the video, and I hope you enjoyed it. Don’t forget
to like and subscribe for more videos if you liked this one. Drop a comment down below
of what movie you would like me to watch next, and I’ll see you in the next video!