Nicole Kidman is Carol, a psychiatrist, who has a small boy, Oliver, played by Jackson Bond, and they live in Washington. There's a husband, Tucker, played by Jeremy Northam, from whom she's separated and has shown little interest for the last 4 years - but suddenly, infected, he's put himself back in the frame claiming legal rights to spend time with Oliver.
She's also got a doctor friend in the frame with whom she seems to be best friends/girlfriend (neither of them seem too sure)! He's Ben and played by Daniel Craig. Between them, along with their labrat buddy, they try to find a cure whilst not falling asleep if they do get infected - because it's OK to be infected but when you go to sleep it gets to work taking over the body during REM! So stay awake!
She's also got a doctor friend in the frame with whom she seems to be best friends/girlfriend (neither of them seem too sure)! He's Ben and played by Daniel Craig. Between them, along with their labrat buddy, they try to find a cure whilst not falling asleep if they do get infected - because it's OK to be infected but when you go to sleep it gets to work taking over the body during REM! So stay awake!
People get infected by being vomited on by someone who's already got it! So that's mostly the gore taken care of. Most of the rest of the grizzly stuff is around dead bodies and bodies 'encased' in some sort of goo/netting whilst they are taken over in sleep. It's done well enough. Then as the heat turns up it becomes a race across the city, against the odds, more and more infected people, less and less uninfected, ex-husband whisking child away, mum racing not only to find him as she's his mum, but also discovering that he seems to be immune - as he'd been infected and gone to sleep and is alright.
You get the idea - the kid is the key to sorting it all out and the main players are racing against the clock - and the infected - to crush it once and for all. They're all doing an OK job though not needing to try very hard - it felt a bit like an easy payday sometimes. There are plot holes and not much clarity about what's what really - but it kind of hangs together under direction from Oliver Hirschbiegel, taken from the late Jack Finney's book (and various other films) Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Having said all that it's certainly entertaining if you don't think too hard about it and just enjoy the ride. The pacing is OK until the last 5 minutes of the 1 hour 40 minutes when the editing becomes laughable - they wrap the whole story up in 5 minutes flat, lurching from chaos to calm. Blink and you'll miss it! Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig do a fine job and the little boy, Jackson Bond matched them both during his scenes. All good fun, but sadly quite forgettable.
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