92
Metascore
16 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100The GuardianPeter BradshawThe GuardianPeter BradshawThe film features an acting cameo from Siegel’s assistant and protege Sam Peckinpah, who also worked on the script, and is known for its high-octane pulp thrills. It should also be praised for elegant satire.
- 100The TelegraphTim RobeyThe TelegraphTim RobeyIt’s the very open-endedness of the film’s subtext that gives it power. When a sleepy California town is overrun, first by the outbreak of a strange delusion that people have been replaced by doppelgangers, but then gradually by the doppelgangers themselves, the film is brilliantly placed, however unwittingly, to illustrate America’s political paranoia from both ends.
- 100Time OutTom HuddlestonTime OutTom HuddlestonA film steeped in psychological realism, its rigorously compact plotting and stark, noir-influenced photography perfectly complementing the mounting sense of clammy, metaphysical dread.
- 100EmpireIan NathanEmpireIan NathanA 50s horror classic that remains a gem of allegorical paranoia.
- 100TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineA superbly crafted film by innovative director Siegel, this low-budget science fiction tale became one of the great cult classics of the genre.
- 100The A.V. ClubKeith PhippsThe A.V. ClubKeith PhippsThe film plays just as easily as a stand-in for the mob mentality that let Joseph McCarthy run amok in his attempt to sniff out every last American with communist sympathies—past, present, and future—until all had conformed to a rigid definition of the right thinking.
- An extremely tight, beautifully made film.
- 88Chicago ReaderChicago ReaderThis genuine SF classic says a good deal more about the McCarthyist hysteria of the early 50s than about the danger of invasion from outer space by soul-stealing pods.
- 70IGNIGNInvasion of the Body Snatchers is an excellent movie about paranoia, conformity, and the need to "stay awake," or else become jaded, emotionally dead.