About

Set in 1970’s San Francisco, the film follows two Department of Health workers Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) and Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) as they discover a sinister alien plant organism. These ‘pod people’ pervade the city by replacing humans with emotionless clones, in a scathing commentary on the hippie counterculture’s deterioration into cynicism post-Vietnam War.

Based on the 1956 novel by Jack Finney – and a remake of Don Seigel’s film released the same year – Philip Kaufman’s sci-fi horror film echoes America’s suffocating atmosphere of social and political distrust. Anchored by an unnerving orchestral score and innovative practical effects, Invasion of the Body Snatchers persists as a chilling examination of social conformity where uncanny body doubles challenge what it means to be human.