The trailer for the Nicole Kidman/Daniel Craig thriller THE INVASION has finally popped up online, a mere two months before its release, and I must say it delivers. When I heard that Oliver Hirschbiegel was directing this film, I expected an intelligent thriller for the thinking fan, since he’s behind two of the best films to come out of Germany in recent years, DOWNFALL and DAS EXPERIMENT. But then rumours started circulating that the studio wanted Hirschbiegel out and the Wachowski brothers in because apparently the film was ‘too smart’ aka too much chit chat, blah blah and not enough bang bang, vroom vroom. Words like ‘reshoot’ and ‘delay’ started to surface, and suddenly what looked like one of the summer’s most promising pictures became somewhat of a lost cause.
But back to the trailer, which fills me with hope that this movie can deliver on its initial promise. Granted, if you set any two-minute clip to a Sigur Ros song, it’s bound to be effective, especially if that clip has Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig running around in full on it’s-up-to-us mode. The film is about a mind-altering alien epidemic, and somehow Kidman’s son holds the key to stopping it. The trailer shows us a lot without giving away too much, and the eerie taglines they use add to the film’s ambiguity. Congratulations, trailer makers—you just put a film back on my radar. You can watch it below or in a higher resolution HERE.