2024 Tarkovsky Prize Honorable Mention: Elfriede Suárez Reichenberger

The Timeless Horror of
INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS

by Elfriede Suárez Reichenberger

Editor note: We loved Elfriede’s essay but as they are a college student we could not score it as one of the placing essays but still wanted to recognize it!

In the world of film horror, success is mostly fleeting. While the idea of terrifying their audience has stirred the spirit of filmmakers practically since cinema’s inception, the enduring status of a single film as a horror classic seldom stands the test of time. Technological breakthroughs bring about new horizons and suddenly, what terrified one generation, amuses the next. It is a genre in constant need for reinvention. This begs the question of why then, almost sixty years after its initial release, Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers continues to make its audience’s skin crawl? The timelessness of the film lies in the viscerality of its central appeal: man’s fear of losing his humanity.

At its core, this is a simple movie. Something is a little off about the inhabitants of Santa Mira, CA; the key term here being little. This is a horror film shot in a sterilely broad daylight: so the monster lurks in the minds of men. If we follow the original 1965 film’s storyline, the inhabitants of this charming suburban daydream of a town have been replaced by identical versions of themselves while they slept by an alien race looking to move their dying species to Earth. Subsequent film adaptations have changed some of the details to infuse their take with freshness; but in truth, the devil here is not in the details ― this horror runs deeper and it takes the shape of whatever crevasses run through the minds behind the eyes that watch it.

Upon its release, the Invasion of the Body Snatchers was widely considered a thinly-veiled metaphor for the surge of Mccarthyism in the America of the fifties. In the midst of an era marked by government-planted paranoia that the enemy is among us, the seeds were planted in the minds of theatergoers and took the shape of a communist neighbor: the disruptor of hardly-earned suburban peace hidden in plain sight. But as the decade faded into the Swinging Sixties and the Generation Gap deepened, its new audiences sowed the opposite message, and toyed with a new paranoia of totalitarian government control, of losing oneself in the conformity needed to power the country’s social and political apparatus. They found their support in the rumors of censorship, with the movie’s original ending being deemed “too bleak” for the audiences of the time, perhaps because it supposedly rolled the credits right after Dr. Bennell faced the camera yelling “They're here already! You're next! You're next!" The following remakes leaned increasingly into the movie’s political undertones, against the backdrop of the post-Vietnam era, the Korean War and later, the Gulf War and the War on Terror. Regardless of the year, audiences everywhere saw the film’s potential as a mirror for the society of the time, and they didn’t doubt to look into it.

It may come as a surprise, then, that the movie’s own star said in an interview that after extensive talks with Jack Finney, the author of the novel which inspired the picture, he felt no political allegory was intended. This posture, although certainly valid, may be missing the point entirely. The film’s ability to terrify audiences across generations lies not in the political subtext that was or wasn’t undoubtedly present in each of the film’s versions, in other words, the answer to the film’s question of why the “body snatchers” are taking over the bodies of humans; it lies in the question, of whether or not we could do anything to stop them.

We could say then, maybe, that humanity's greatest fear is not just of losing itself, but doing so unknowingly. It is a fear which plagues the minds of people such as you and me, taking the shape of the horrors of war carried out by people whose government has lied to them about the nature of the enemy, or nameless figures lurking behind the shadows of power, controlling our minds, be it through our television sets or cellphones. In this sense, Invasion of the Body Snatchers may as well be a cautionary tale meant to remind its audience to take a good look around because the day in which they take over will look almost exactly like today; it’s just up to us to decide whom or what exactly “they” are.

2024 Tarkovsky Prize 3rd Place: Isabella Mo

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS

by Isabella Mo

I still remember the day I felt like the Demon Child. Waiting in line at preschool to wash my hands before lunch, the girl in front of me told me I looked like a princess. It was a silly comment, but I felt a surge of confidence. I spun around in a circle, arms spread wide, mimicking the twirl of a Disney Princess in a lavish gown. Unaware of my surroundings, I hit the boy behind me with my hand—right in the face. Before I could even reach the sink to wash my hands, I was cemented to the timeout chair. The boy was now crying, cupping his cheek in the embrace of a preschool teacher. She was calling our parents. I felt scared and hungry—they did not let me eat lunch. Meanwhile, the girl who commented was enjoying her food at a table nearby. I overheard her complain to the kid next to her that I was such a loud cry baby. I shouted at her to shut up. The teachers scolded me, my words justifying that I was a bad kid "acting out." That night, my Mom’s voice echoed through the house, demanding I stop my problematic behavior. No one asked me to tell them what happened. I was the perceived aggressor, the Demon Child.

The pain of not feeling heard nor believed from this experience resurfaces when I watch Don Siegel’s film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The 1956 black-and-white film has many scenes of characters responding to the rising issue in Santa Mira in typical, unpanicked ways, which extracts familiar emotions from my perspective of feeling alienated. The human instinct to adhere to what is familiar and make assumptions to protect one’s perspective of the truth emerges continuously.

Most notably, we see before discovering the body snatching, Dr. Bennell uses typical treatments and advice for the less mentally sane to help his patients who claim their family members are not the same. For Jimmy Grimaldi, Dr. Bennell sends him off with medication and a hearty slap on the butt, instructing Grandma Grimaldi to have him stay with her for the night. For Wilma Lentz, he schedules an appointment with Dr. Dan Kauffman for psychiatric help. Though Dr. Bennell listens to Jimmy and Wilma’s worries, he fails to take them seriously. What I fear most, looking back at my memory. The trust characters in the film had when asking Dr. Bennell for help vanishes as he takes Dr. Kauffman’s word about what has happened in town the past two weeks—an epidemic of mass hysteria. Interestingly, it is odd how Dr. Bennell initially ignores the many identical worries of his patients. When abnormalities like these become increasingly common, scientific experts typically dig deeper to discover why the phenomenon occurs. However,Dr. Bennell mutes his patients’ voices, much like how mine was after the boy started crying. Reverting to treatments for those who are mentally insane reflects the lack of care Dr. Bennell takes to hear them out. But his perspective quickly switches.

As the film progresses, those with qualifications use "logic" to dismiss the concerns Dr. Bennell raises. When Becky Driscoll’s double in her basement has vanished, and the only evidence of Jack Belicec’s double is a spot of blood on the pool table, Dr. Kauffman concludes that the body on the pool table is the product of a murder. As Dr. Bennell and Jack try to convince him with evidence, Dr. Kauffman only responds with his reasonable assumptions: murders can leave little trace, dead bodies often have plain appearances, people can burn off fingerprints to hide their identity, and mass hysteria can cause one to hallucinate a double of Becky in her basement. If an audience member were a character in this film unaware of the body snatching and noticed the lack of Dr. Bennell’s evidence in the scene, they would agree with Dr. Kauffman. His responses are nothing less than convincing, surging feelings of uneasiness. He manages to build a plausible argument that Dr. Bennell is delusional. How can one defend oneself when one possesses no weapons to do so?

Though Dr. Bennell finally finds people who listen to him, this film highlights the ever-present dismissal of one's words during times of need. It is painful seeing Dr. Bennell's desperation grow, seeing the voices of others outweigh his own. Throughout the film, the justification of diverting one’s problems compared to helping the characters is constantly prevalent. In our world today, we see just that in many ways. From police arresting and shooting people of color because they assume they are or will cause harm to people telling girls and women that they are asking to be harassed, assaulted, and raped. We see how some decisions are out of one’s hands. They can only be made by those with more power and privilege. This film is not to say that we cannot trust those around us or those who serve and protect us. But it reminds us that they may not want to hear our voices. Evidence is crucial to making informed decisions, but manipulating it to fit preconceived lines of reasoning and failing to hear multiple perspectives is unethical. The truth is worth more.