Tobe Hooper directs Hunter Carson, Karen Black and Timothy Bottoms in this remake of the sci-fi horror from the 1950s where aliens exert mind control on a town’s population.

A very haphazard film. Told from a child’s POV, it has a naive innocence. Maybe it has retained that simplistic vibe from the 50s source material but it really doesn’t work. You have a prepubescent in a horror situation, where he is the only one behaving rationally or heroically. You can’t really get scared for him and the narrative balloons to take in way too much scale for him to still feel like a valid lead by third act. The humour might be tongue in cheek but doesn’t hit. Only some gloopy creature FX work makes this watchable.

3