A Constant Visual Feast

In another era, I would point to “body snatcher” films, and the “body snatcher” trope, as abjectly terrifying. I’ll take the terror down to earth for context: I am petrified of having my identity compromised or stolen. I do not like the idea of actions being taken under my guise, and suffering consequences for someone else’s crimes. Apart from the obvious injustice, this sounds to me like pure violation. I am not down with that. Now elevate the terror to exospheric levels. I really don’t like the notion of something parading around as me, not simply passing itself off as me on paper. One is bad. The other is worse. Guess which is which.

Maybe there’s another critic who thinks differently about modern body snatcher movies than I do, and carries over that same terror from past generations in the niche onto this one. But for my money, T-Blockers, The Becomers, and Meanwhile on Earth, the three  prominent body snatchers released this year, are all so intrinsically sad that the terror of original body snatcher movies – like, y’know, Invasion of the Body Snatchers ’56 – is nowhere to be found or felt in their material. They’re tragedies in horror cinema’s form.

I dug into all of that for the pages of Paste Magazine.