- As a Washington, D.C. psychiatrist unearths the origin of an alien epidemic, she also discovers her son might be the only way it can be stopped.
- While returning to Earth, the space shuttle explodes and the fragments bring an alien virus that recodes the human DNA. In Washington, the psychiatrist Carol Bennell observes the modification of the behavior of one of her clients first, then in her former husband and finally in the population in general. Together with her friend Dr. Ben Driscoll the researcher Dr. Stephen Galeano, they discover that the extraterrestrial epidemic affects human beings while sleeping and that her son Ollie, who had chickenpox when he was a baby, is immune to the disease and may save mankind from the outbreak.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- The Invasion tells the story of a mysterious epidemic that alters the behavior of human beings. When a Washington D.C. psychiatrist discovers the epidemics origins are extraterrestrial, she must fight to protect her son, who may hold the key to stopping the escalating invasion.—http://theinvasionmovie.warnerbros.com/
- When the Space Shuttle disintegrates on re-entry, it spreads a virus that it had acquired on its voyage. Humans seem to become emotionless automatons. For Dr. Carol Bennell, a clinical psychiatrist, she begins to hear of this metamorphosis from her patients who tell her that a loved one is no longer who they once were. She and her friend Dr. Ben Driscoll begin to investigate and she realizes that her ex-husband, Tucker Kaufman, has been infected. Unfortunately, her son Oliver is with him for a weekend visit. She also learns that her son may be the key to ending the epidemic.—garykmcd
- For Dr. Carol Bennell, a psychiatrist, the first sign that something is wrong comes from the patient who has been seeing her for four years. "My husband is not my husband," she says. Carol prescribes an anti-psychotic, but she'll soon learn the woman's statement was perfectly rational. After Carol drops off her son to visit his father, the thought occurs to her: "My ex-husband is not my ex-husband." More and more, those around her are behaving oddly. They're cold, emotionless. Meanwhile, her romance with Ben Driscoll, a research scientist, reaps unexpected benefits. She asks him to examine a weird substance she found in the neighbors' Halloween candy. What looks like a thin slice of flesh proves not to be some prank, but an alien substance that will be the key to learning why everywhere on Earth people are becoming what they are not.—J. Spurlin
- An alien life form, much like a fungus or spore, clings to the space shuttle Patriot as it crashes back to Earth, spreading tainted debris from Texas to Washington, D.C. Curious onlookers steal, touch and even sell the parts on eBay, much like what happened with the Columbia disaster. This in turn infects many people, robbing them of their emotions when they enter REM sleep.
One of the first people infected is Tucker (Jeremy Northam), a CDC director investigating the crash. Once he is overcome, Tucker uses the CDC to spread the disease further, disguising the spores as flu inoculations. In a panic from a made-up "flu bug," people rush to get "inoculated," later becoming pod people when they sleep that night.
Tucker's ex-wife, psychiatrist Carol Bennell (Nicole Kidman), knows something is amiss and, after locating several patients who say their loved ones are "imposters," teams up with love interest and fellow doctor Ben Driscoll (Daniel Craig) to uncover what is really going on.
With the help of Ben's friend Galeano (Jeffrey Wright), a biologist, they find out about the spore and discover that it takes over the brain during REM sleep. They also find out that people who have suffered diseases that affect the makeup of the brain, such as syphilis or ADEM, are immune to the spore because their previous diseases prevent the spore from "latching on" to the brain matter. Carol's son Oliver (Jackson Bond) is immune to the spore because of scarlet fever-type symptoms he had as a young child. Also seen immune is one of Carol's patients, Wendy Lenk, who escaped to her sister's house. On her way to her office, Carol sees several people crying and distraught and a homeless man having some sort of fit. When she gets to her office, Carol remembers what Wendy said about her husband not being her husband and searches on the Internet for similar responses. Suddenly, her secretary (infected) makes her favorite tea and infects it to spread the disease to her. Carol is about to drink the tea but receives a call from Ben and she leaves.
Carol meets with Ben, Ludmilla, Stephan and Ludmilla's aide Jill and witness Yorish's transformation into one of the infected. Carol attempts to take a photograph of him, partially bringing him out of REM sleep and causing him to have a cardiac arrest. Carol then leaves to get her son back from Tucker. When she arrives at his house, he and several colleagues attempt to seize her and he infects her by spitting on her face. She escapes and returns to Nem at Ludi's house. They leave when Henryk returns, infected with some other people. Stephan and Jill safely arrive at a base outside Baltimore where they and several Nobel Prize winners attempt to make a cure for the alien virus. Carol and Ben separate to find Oliver, who tells Carol his location by texting her. She is chased by several infected and pretends to act infected when Gene, Tucker's neighbor's child, finds her. He takes her back to Tucker's mother's house, where the four dine. Carol pretends to be one of them, and secretly tells Ben her location. She finds Oliver in a back room and they reunite. Gene interrupts them, and Carol knocks him out and leaves with Oliver.
She sees several normal people attempting to pose as infected, including one woman who is dragged out of her car, another who two cops chase down and subdue. To help stay awake, Carol heads to a pharmacy and takes an assortment of prescription amphetamines from Ritalin to Dexedrine. She encounters Ben, who has come to seek them, but discovers that he is infected. She uses the gun retrieved earlier from an infected/transforming police officer against Ben and several people who she locked inside a closet. She kills them all except Ben, who she shoots in the leg. Shortly after a brief fight to get away, some of Ben's colleagues pick up the two on a rooftop via helicopter. They head with Galeano at the base of operations. Scientists use Oliver's blood to create a airborne vaccine. Because the spore latches on to the brain during REM sleep, no one remembers a thing when they are cured. They feel as though they have woken from a dreamless nap.
Both Ben and Carol are musing over the pod people and their emotionless kind at the end of the movie, when they read the paper and see "business as usual" (other tragedies, war, violent news, etc.).
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