Greenpoint Film Festival 2020 Review: SNATCHERS

Snatchers is certainly going to be one of the cult offerings of this festival

OK, so we have some weird starfish like aliens coming out of a blue plant found in a Mennonites’ backyard that glows blue and is very keen to take over all of Brooklyn before conquering the Eastern seaboard in this post-Trump environment with a hint of woke.

Another of the Greenpoint Film Festival 2020 offerings, SNATCHERS is clearly a direct homage to the 1970s and 1980s paranoia personified in Philip Kaufman’s classic 1978 remake of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (I don’t blame you if you, like me, is half expecting a Leonard Nimoy character modelled on the psychiatrist he played in the film in one of his later non-Spock roles!).

You can also add relevance to John Carpenter’s THEY LIVE, coupled with a hint of CRITTERS and GREMLINS thrown in for good measure, with more than a homage to John Carpenter’s ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK in one particular character, which is very much Issac Hayes-Duke-lite.

Related post: A New Trailer Has Arrived For An American Pickle

Whether or not there is a direct reference to the start-off point for COVID-19 within SNATCHERS (probably more coincidental than timely!), the start off point is a street market and a collection of rival food trucks offering all manner of delicacies, but when a lesbian couple decide to partake in a purchase of some weird blue corn from a Mennonite, which quickly makes its’ mark (or stain) on an English lady who runs a pickle-based truck, you can anticipate – and predict – where no man – or person – is going….

In the meantime, there is an FBI-wannabe, a female documentarian wanting to make a film about the plight of Mexican maids whilst posing as one and others who drift in and out of the proceedings – and there might be a touch of STAR WARS hero comparison in there as well….

Directed by John Kingsman from a script by Guy Patton, SNATCHERS is quirky and mildly amusing at times, but does perhaps feel a little indecisive in what it is attempting to be as either a sci-fi comedy or as a straightforward horror yarn. More savvy viewers will spot the deliberate references here (and even a touch of John Carpenter’s THE THING is here within). There is a touch of social commentary throughout as is the wont in sci-fi cult films like this.

However, the film-makers do have one neat little subversion within the film which takes the mickey out of what characters try to use as solutions in a movie.

SNATCHERS is certainly going to be one of the cult offerings of this festival, but people might be short-changed at the end. It’s still mildly diverting, but it has been done before in other films – and it feels a little rushed in the climax.

SNATCHERS plays on Thursday August 6^th, 2020 at 10.30PM in the Greenpoint Film Festival. Tickets available here.

Please follow and like us: