This is the third, and easily worst, remake of Don Siegel's Cold War classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Reportedly dogged by production woes (including star Nicole Kidman being injured during a car stunt), Downfall director Oliver Hirschbiegel's original cut was reshot at considerable expense by a panicky studio (who hired the Wachowski brothers and V for Vendetta director James McTeigue). It certainly shows on screen: this sci-fi thriller has been nudged towards near-incoherence by excessive tinkering. Kidman plays a Washington psychiatrist investigating a viral epidemic from space that's turning her fellow citizens into emotionless zombies. Attempts to tap into the post-9/11 zeitgeist are largely botched, while this version's greatest asset - its subversive, anti-human subtext - is left undeveloped, lost amid the reshoots as either a neutered leftover from the original cut or a tacked-on afterthought. A few taut suspense sequences aside, this empty attempt to update a classic is as hollow as one of its body-snatched pod people.

Washington, D.C. psychologist Carol Bennell and her colleague Dr. Ben Driscoll are the only two people on Earth who are aware of an epidemic running rampant through the city. They discover an alien virus aboard a crashed space shuttle that transforms anyone who comes into contact with it into unfeeling drones while they sleep. Carol realizes her son holds the key to stopping the spread of the plague and she races to find him before it is too late.