Happy Black Friday Copycats and Doppelgangers,

I hope you had a good Thanksgiving and that you have another great day off today. I am personally off til Monday, though I’m probably going to go in to work on Saturday. Blech!

Anywho, today’s post is yet another watch that happened on my Branson writer’s retreat (yes, I know how belated this post is, how shameful!), this time the movie titled Assimilate.

I needed some serious R&R, so of course there was plenty of Netflix and chill time (with some wine too of course).

I simply found this on Netflix while drinking a little bit of wine and thought I’d give it a go. The blurb reminded me of something (I’ll get into that) I’d seen before, so I was curious.

All right, let’s get into it!

Movie Blurb:

Three friends making a web series about their town discover that their neighbors are being killed and replaced by creatures who are perfect copies of their victims.            

My Review:

So I’ll start with this. This movie is yet another remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I know, spoilers boo! But honestly, it’s important that you know this if you’re going to give this movie a chance.

This movie starts a little different than the other remakes and versions to date in that it has more of a younger take on things. Several teens in a small town in Missouri are documenting their lives.

While recording, they discover that some odd things are happening in their town, primarily that the adults are acting strange and that people are saying that their friends and relatives aren’t the same as they were before.

As they soon discover, these friends uncover a dark secret, but can they figure things out before it’s too late?

I’m all for a remake if it’s executed well. I’ve read Invasion of the Body Snatchers and thought it was a great read. I’ve also seen the 70’s and 00’s remakes, and those have been my favorites to date. This one? To be honest, I didn’t like this one as much as I’d hoped.

I like the young adult concept of this remake. It’s a great idea, but there are several things that irked me about this film.

For starters, originality. This movie attempts to be as original as it can be, but there are one too many scenes taken directly from other versions that are only slightly different. I feel that with the number of remakes already in existence, if a film company is going to dare another one they’ve got to be extremely original, and this simply was not the case.

We did get a good build up and that was enjoyable, but the characters didn’t really seem to have that much depth to them. Yes, they are high schoolers and I get that, but again, I needed more from a remake.

There is a fair amount of adventure and action once things get set into motion, and some of that really was original. Kudos! But was this movie really all that memorable? Nope. I still prefer the 70’s or 00’s remake and probably always will.

I will say, I did like the twist at the end, but it didn’t make enough sense given what we learned throughout the movie. How are they just now coming to this realization? (Nope, not spoiling it!)

With all of these things being considered, I’m giving this movie a 5/10. It’s simply not original enough to enjoy as much as I would’ve hoped. Maybe you’ll see more in this movie than I did, and if you do, that’s great! Happy watching!

Wrap-up

All right, that’s it for this movie review. Have you seen this movie? What did you think? Did you love it, hate it? Have any recommendations similar to this movie? Feel free to comment, you know I love dialogues!

***Can’t get enough of Jaunts & Haunts? Subscribe to my Chills and Thrills Newsletter on my home page so you don’t miss a thing! Newsletter emails go out every Sunday! Also, feel free to check me out at the social media links below!***

Facebook | GoodReads | Tumblr