Scary movies are not message vehicles

On Wednesday, in a valiant effort to keep up with new scary movies, I went to see "The Invasion," a remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig (whose shirtless pics appear more on my good friend Greg Hernandez's "Out in Hollywood" blog than shirtless Putin pics appear here). The plot consists of the space shuttle breaking into a bizzillion pieces upon re-entry, scattering alien amoeba infected pieces everywhere including Washington, D.C., where Kidman's ex-husband at the CDC starts acting even more funky than an ex usually acts. Hence starts the infections and chaos.

Now, this could have just been a plain ol' scary movie. But the film tries to make a bunch of psuedo-philosophical points by interspersing news briefs detailing the everyday chaos of war, terrorists, Kim Jong-Il, etc. Because, apparently, we need to seriously ask ourselves if the world would be more peaceful if we let body snatchers vomit green goo in our mouths and turn us into robotic zombies after an oozy overnight metamorphosis.

Not to mention, one news broadcast in the background of a scene states that Iraqis -- Sunni, Shiite and Kurd -- were jubilantly celebrating after the last withdrawal of U.S. troops, then quotes "President al-Sadr." Um, who wrote this movie? If Muqtada al-Sadr ever made it to the role of Iraqi president, there would be no Sunnis and Kurds rallying at his side to cheer the expulsion of the Americans. Rather, most of the Sunnis and Kurds would be dead at the hands of genocidal Shiite militias at that point.

*Sigh*... I guess I thought horror movies were safe from being a vehicle to push "messages." Though I can't see Rob Zombie trying to do that with his upcoming take on "Halloween," and don't expect Michael Myers to represent a great Karl Rove conspiracy or be the product of charter schools gone awry. I think we'll be safe on the plot here -- Myers will be a screwed-up guy doing screwed-up things and the good people will have to fight him. Now there's a metaphor for current events!