You may wonder — how is a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Abel Ferrara, the director of Driller Killer and Ms. 45 any good? It’s great, helped by a tense script by Nicholas St. John (who worked with Ferrara on nine movies), Stuart Gordon (Re-animator) and Dennis Paoli (Castle Freak). Yes, this is the third adaption of Jack Finney’s book, but each of the three films have their own reasons for existing and reasons that I enjoy them.

This movie disappeared from theaters, despite a four star review from Roger Ebert. Warner Brothers originally scheduled the film for release in October 1992, but when they saw so many serious horror films coming out, they released Innocent Blood instead and dumped this in theaters in January.

Unlike the other versions, it takes place on a military base and puts Gabrielle Anwar’s young character against the aliens, which are violently shown taking over human bodies, including her stepmother Carol (Meg Tilly), father (Terry Kinney) and most of the base, including commanding officer R. Lee Emery. Forest Whitaker and Christine Elise (Child’s Play 2) also have short roles that they really make the most out of.

This is somehow an even darker version than the 70’s remake, which is pretty much as nihilistic as it gets. The budget is obviously lower and the FX are much grosser, so it feels like it fits into the early 90’s pre-CGI direct to video space quite well.