- Directed by Philip Kaufman
- Written by W. D> Richter, Jack Finney
- Stars Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 55 Minutes
- Link: https://amzn.to/37GTHdS
Synopsis
We begin on an alien planet, with strange smoke and gases swirling. Some of the strange material floats off into space… Towards Earth. Credits roll.
We see some slimy-looking plants in the downtown areas of various cities. Something grows out of the slime, something with tendrils and budding pods.
Matthew Bennell, with the department of health, inspects restaurants for bad things. He finds a rat turd in the fancy French restaurant, and he dares the manager to eat it. He gets really excited over the rat turd, like it’s going to make his career.
Matthew calls Elizabeth and wants her to come in to work early. Elizabeth lives with Geoffrey Howell, a dentist. Elizabeth picked one of the funny pod-plants earlier in the day, and they go to sleep with one right next to the bed.
In the morning, the plant’s container is broken and Geoffrey doesn’t talk very much. Elizabeth is freaked out by his weird behavior. “Geoffrey is not Geoffrey,” she says. Matthew suggests going to see Dr. Kibner, his psychiatrist friend. Elizabeth does a weird trick with her eyes, which amuses Matthew. He goes to the Chinese laundry, and the man there wants his help “My Wife. She wrong. Different. That not my wife,” he complains. Matthew isn’t a doctor, so he doesn’t do anything. As he leaves, he notices the garbage man trashing some weird fibers in the garbage truck; we saw the same fibers in the garbage when Geoffrey threw out the remains of his plant.
Elizabeth notices that people seem to be looking at each other funny, like they are passing messages to each other without speaking. They all seem to know each other. She thinks it’s some kind of big conspiracy. She followed Geoffrey all over town and watched as people passed packages back and forth all day. She feels like the whole city was different. A crazy-looking man comes and beats on their windshield. He looks suspiciously like Miles from the original film. He gets hit by a car and killed.
Dr. Kibner is working with a woman who says her husband isn’t her husband. He tells Elizabeth to wait her turn. Kibner convinces the woman to go home with her husband. Kibner admits he’s heard the same story a dozen times this week, but it always goes away after a day or two.
We also meet Jack Belicec, an annoying writer at Dr. Kibner’s party. His wife runs a mud bath spa. She talks about how music stimulates plant growth. She finds a man covered in slime and tendrils. They call Matthew and show him the “body.” It’s only half-formed and has no fingerprints. It looks like Jack, and suddenly Jack is really, really sleepy. Realizing that Elizabeth has been right all along, Matthew calls her, but it’s too late; Geoffrey has gotten to her first. Jack calls Kibner to come over and see the thing, but first, he takes a nap.
Matthew goes after Elizabeth and breaks into her house. He finds Faux-Lizabeth almost fully grown and the real one sleeping nearby. He grabs her and runs out of the house. Meanwhile, Kibner doesn’t find anything unusual at the spa, and Jack’s wife looks out the open window just in time to see the garbage truck closing.
Elizabeth explains it all to Kibner, who doesn’t buy any of it. Kibner leaves, and we see that he’s in on it already. Elizabeth and Nancy come to the conclusion that the little flower pods they found are causing all this. Matthew and Elizabeth try to get others to help them, but it looks like everyone else is already against them. Even the people who said others weren’t themselves have recanted their stories. Even the radio news stops playing.
They all go home and start to sleep. A tiny pod touches Matthew and soon grows into a duplicate of him. “They get you when you sleep.” He calls the police and they know his name already. The police and everyone comes after them, but the four run away. They walk down the street and try to blend in; they grab a cab to the airport. The driver turns them in, but they get away just in time. They tumble over a pod in the process of copying a homeless man sleeping next to his dog.
That night, they watch all the converted people, each carrying a pod to take to some innocent, unconverted person. Jack, Geoffrey, and Kibner come in, and they’ve all been converted. They explain how wonderful it is to be changed. All their memories are kept, but there’s no hate, love, anxiety or other troublesome emotions. Kibner gives them both a sedative to make them sleep. “People will fight you, David,” says Matthew. “In an hour, you won’t want them to,” Kibner explains. They kill Jack and lock Kibner in the freezer to escape. They catch up with Nancy on the way out, and she’s still OK. She’s been fooling the converted. They run into a dog with the homeless man’s face– something went wrong there. Nancy screams, and the rest of the city realizes they’re unconverted.
They hide in a semi-truck that is being loaded with more pods. They walk through a factory where they grow the pods. Elizabeth gets injured and can’t run anymore. They hear ships, and Matthew goes to the shipyard to find a way to get away from the city. He finds that they’re loading pods onto the ship by the thousands. Nowhere is going to be safe. He goes back to Elizabeth, but it’s too late; her body is already decomposed into a husk that collapses when he picks her up. The new Elizabeth sits up and tells him to join them. He runs.
Matthew grabs an axe and knocks the lights down, causing a fire at the pod factory. He narrowly escapes and causes the factory to burn. Morning comes, and Matthew is practicing fitting in with the others; they can’t tell. He even goes back to work and does his regular job. Nancy catches up with him, and he does the “alien scream thing.” He wasn’t faking it, he’s been turned.
Commentary
I guess Jeff Goldblum really has played the exact same annoying character in every film. Has Veronica Cartwright ever been in a movie and not ended up screaming?
Unlike the first film, this one does drag in a few places. It spends more time on character development and situational humor than the original, but in the process, it slows down the action quite a bit. The plot is really almost exactly the same as the earlier film, but there’s so much added detail that it’s still good. It’s a bit more realistic-feeling than the original, and of course, it’s in color, so there’s that.
The scene where Matthew goes to sleep and the four pods open around him is really well done. As is the twist at the end where he isn’t who we thought he was. Both versions of the film are really good, and each one is better in it’s own way. If you’re looking for a fast-paced scary movie, go with the original. If you want a more angsty, gritty, realistic take, go with the second.