I believe that I am once again caught up on my horror movie quota. I mean, The Invasion is in actuality a sci-fi suspense thriller, but once you go longer than two words in a label, people lose interest, and so here we are in the land of miscategorized video shelves. (Except that since people no longer go to video stores, we’re in the land of miscategorized Netflix category links. Except they probably go ahead and categorize movies correctly, being who they are. But I digress.)

Space spores land on earth and jump into someone’s blood stream, re-writing his DNA in such a way that he loses many of the characteristics that we commonly consider human and is driven to reproduce the spores and introduce them into everyone else on the planet, the end result being that strong emotions will be eradicated, and along with them war and atrocities. But also passion, of course; what they’ve got is an infectious version of the Pax. It’s very much a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, lacking only pods and Kevin McCarthy. (Though they did snag a female lookalike to restage his climactic scene from the original film.) Throwing a monkeywrench into the sporified plan is psychiatrist Nicole Kidman, who leads a small group in a quest to save her son, escape from the people who are no longer who they are, and maybe find a way to cure the rising tide of non-humanity. I could make jokes about how practically everyone in the cast is required to either act wooden and unemotional, or else act like they are acting wooden and unemotional for the purposes of fooling the former group. But the jokes pretty well make themselves, so I will not.

It was a perfectly serviceable thriller, making up in car crashes what it lacked in explosions. It was very nearly an excellent example of that perennial science fiction question, “What makes us human?”; it presented humans with all their flaws and their strengths, and it presented an alternative that was disturbingly non-human while at the same time debateably an improvement on the mold. But before I could start to actively consider the question, they cheated and removed it from the table. Coming so close to doing something that right has left me feeling disproportionately disappointed relative to the quality of the rest of the movie. A specific explanation resides below the spoiler cut, for the willing.

So, the alien spore people say, “Look at us, we’ve removed all of the bad things about you humans, and they’ll never have to happen again, but you’ll still have the same minds and experiences and memories as before, so that’s pretty much a win-win, right?” And Dr. Kidman says, “Ah, but what about the people who are immune and can’t be successfully sporified? Such as my son who I love very much and will defend to my last breath, and besides which, the audience totally thinks he’s cute. Just ask them, if you don’t believe me.” And the audience nods, and says, “Well, yeah, we do. Have you seen those dimples? Come on!” And then they break into their own mini conversations on the same theme, until that one guy in the middle of the seventh row asks them to please shut up, because he can’t hear what the aliens are saying in response. The hubbub finally dies down, in time to hear the aliens saying, “…see both sides of the issue, sure, but it’s worth sacrificing the few people who are immune to make up for everyone else. So, we’re pretty much going to kill your boy, now.” And Dr. Kidman starts shooting everyone in sight, and the audience applauds wildly because, “Those pesky peace-loving aliens were about to kill L’il Dimples Kidman, by God, and if that doesn’t prove they’re evil rather than merely espousing a disturbingly unfamiliar point of view that we must nevertheless consider seriously prior to rejecting it, we sure as hell don’t know what would.” And then Dr. Kidman used her son’s blood or spinal fluid or dissected brain or something to cure the aliens of their un-American beliefs, and everyone lived happily ever after. Except for the philosophers, who were rightfully pissed off about having had stolen their opportunity to hold rational discourse with the rest of the audience, but that was just as well because who wants to be trapped in a dark room with a bunch of philosophers anyway?