1998 |
|
SF elements |
covert alien takeover |
Review |
Strange things are happening at Herrington High. Football Coach Willis [Robert Patrick, here more Terminator than Agent John Doggett ] in particular is acting very out of character. Nerdy student Casey [Elijah Wood] realises with dawning horror that the staff have been taken over by alien invaders, and that the students, and soon the rest of the town, are going the same way. With a bunch of unlikely allies, he sets out to stop the invasion. (After what he has to go through here, the coming Ringwraiths should prove no problem!) More horror than SF, this is a competent reworking of Invasion of the Body Snatchers , as set in High School (although, as the SF geek character deliciously points out, IotBS is itself a reworking of Heinlein's The Puppet Masters ). It nicely contrasts the SFnal horrors of alien mind control (without the earlier links to Communist threat) with the real-world horrors of school life. |
Rating: 4 |
[ unmissable | great stuff | worth watching | mind candy | waste of time | unfinishable ] |
reviewed 14 September 2002