Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Sanjeev Waters A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Ortiz Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Scott LeBrun Erica Kessler plays Melissa, a sexy young employee at an agency who begins to notice people in her life behaving differently. Suddenly, her boss Samantha (Jessica Bork), whom she ordinarily can't stand, is a lot more pleasant. It turns out, something sinister is afoot: ugly alien plants are making the rounds, and producing carbon copies of human beings while they sleep. Soon Melissa is in the position of not knowing who to trust.For those who don't already know, the movie producing company The Asylum has been in the business of making really cheap knock-offs of popular titles. Here, they clearly incorporate an "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" type plot, but Jack Finney probably wouldn't have been too impressed with this micro budgeted rehash. Filmed on location in L.A., it features a cast full of insipid "actors" and "actresses". The ladies are certainly attractive, and there *is* one lesbian sex scene, but these aspects don't do much to enliven such a third-rate script (by Leigh Scott, who also has a cameo as the desperate Zach Richardson). The music by Chris Ridenhour is actually decent, and deserves to be in a better movie. The effects are *very* limited, so there's not even an agreeable gross-out factor that might have made this more fun.As bad as most of the performers are, they're not totally without appeal. Kessler doesn't generate much sympathy for her heroine, but this viewer did like Danae Nason, the actress who plays her co-worker Billie.Viewers are better off checking out or revisiting the '56, '78, or '93 versions of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", or, for that matter, the '94 adaptation of Robert Heinleins' "The Puppet Masters". Even B movie devotees may find this one to be terminally boring.Three out of 10.

gavin6942 After a meteor shower in California, Melissa feels that her co-workers and her boss Samantha that work in the agency owned by Vickland are acting differently after receiving a weird plant.This film has terrible sound, weak visuals, abysmal acting. I cannot even say there was any direction involved. As for the story, how do the writers sleep at night claiming they wrote this? The story was already written (a few times)... all they had to do was steal the credit.This sinks even below the low standards that The Asylum usually holds itself to. Rather than be released, it should have been just been erased and burned in a bonfire. They could not even do the soft-core scenes right (of which there are far too many).

manchester_england2004 INVASION OF THE POD PEOPLE (aka INVASION: THE BEGINNING) is a straight-to-DVD horror movie produced by The Asylum - a low budget producer who produce such movies regularly.The Asylum productions are generally hit and miss. Some like THE BEAST OF BRAY ROAD are great gems. But there are movies like HILLSIDE CANNIBALS that are really, really awful. It is best that you keep an open mind when viewing any of their works.The plot is essentially a clone of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS but with the setting transposed to a modeling agency. For those unaware, the story sees people being replaced by exact duplicates but who behave differently from their original selves. In this incarnation, each character concerned receive a mysterious plant. Several days later, the said character is seen to be behaving strangely with her colleagues.Because the plot of the movie is a clone of a more famous production, people will knock it and on this site they have done. If you find the idea of a clone of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS too unappealing, read no further. If however you are curious, keep reading and I will try persuading you of how it attempts to differentiate itself.With the budget of this movie being very low, The Asylum have been wise to limit special effects. There are no transformation scenes, no silly monsters, no CGI, no rubber masks or prosthetics and no excessive amounts of fake blood here.The direction throughout is very restrained, with no camera tricks or usage of angles to generate tension. Background music is also very limited. But these factors do not hold it back as I shall demonstrate.The movie starts off slow but progresses very well. It relies upon the sinister nature of the "altered" characters to drive the story. This works like a charm. Well-written, simple dialogue combined with great timing of delivery by the cast build up suspense and maintain interest in the key scenes.There is also a very sensual nature to the "altered" beings that holds interest. Without giving away too much, I can reveal that there are sex scenes here and some nudity. Having said this, the nudity is limited and does not come across as tawdry. The sex scenes are intended to be erotic. There are no "silicon babes" here. I am biased in favour of the natural female form so the nudity is appealing to me (and I am very fussy).The twists in the story are predictable but this does not make them any less interesting to watch.The script does not demand Oscar-worthy actresses but the actresses in this movie give surprisingly good performances. In a surprise but highly welcome move from The Asylum, overacting is kept to a minimum. Erica Roby is incredibly lovely and gives a particularly good performance in the lead role. And Jessica Bork plays her sensual role to perfection. I would definitely like to see other movies with these actresses in.And it pleases me to confirm that there are no - repeat no - annoying moronic teenage guys or hysterical teenage girls here. This is strictly an adult-oriented affair and would most likely not appeal to teenagers at all.There are a few unintentionally funny moments to appeal to fans of the "so-bad-it's-good" movies. As a fan of such movies myself, I did not view this movie as a whole from that perspective because it wasn't silly enough to appeal to me on that level.The short running time ensures that the movie doesn't outstay its welcome. It surprisingly didn't drag at all for me.The only major problem with this movie is the ending. It was too abrupt. I would like to have seen this story taken further.Overall, this is a great movie. It is a clone of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS but has enough qualities to differentiate itself. I recommend it to fans of straight-to-DVD horror movies or fans of other movies from The Asylum. Others would most likely be disappointed.

ccreel67 This movie had all the qualifications of a bad, bad movie; bad acting, bad dialog, poor plot progression, terrible soundtrack quality, bad set selection, scenes of people talking on cell phones, scenes of people in cars, stock footage and really bad special effects. When I see films like this I think, this was someone's film school project. The truth is it was probably an independent film festival project or made for Showtime.To describe the acting as bad is using creative license on my part. There wasn't much acting in the film but there was a good bit of reading of cue cards or TelePrompter. The people in the film look at the side of the camera in every scene. The soundtrack had a lot of unexplained noise in a few scenes. The noise, which I figured out was supposed to be the pods multiplying, was so loud that the dialog was unintelligible.The plot of the film would have been difficult to follow if I hadn't read the description on the DVD cover. The characters of the movie supposedly worked for a modeling agency. The story the film presents is; There's a company named Blockthorn that does something and one guy, the boss, wants something done and yells at his employees about getting it right. Then some of the employees become obsessed with a strange plant. One of the employees is attacked by a pod from the plant and then keeps sharing the plant with her coworkers. Yes, this movie was so bad that I wanted to turn away. But we suffered through to the end which left the plot open as if they intend to make a sequel.Then there's the sex. Of course these pods from outer space know about seduction and use it to acquire their pod victims. There where at least four sex scenes with topless ladies. But these scenes were bad too cause only in low budget films to folks have sex without taking their pants and skirts off. Invasion of the Pod People is just bad. I wouldn't recommend that anyone watch this film.