Some of the best sci-fi movies aren't really about the future: it's about the here and now. And there are few better examples of that then Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The original 1956 movie may be dated in terms of its visuals, but it's still utterly chilling in its portrayal of a world where everybody looks normal but has lost their humanity. And the 1978 remake, which you can stream on Prime Video, does a fantastic job of updating its look without losing the chills.
The remake stars Donald Sutherland and takes it from the small town America of the 1950s to late-seventies San Francisco, a setting that still feels timely today. And it shares its claustrophobic, paranoid vibe with much of the era's American cinema, where filmmakers used movies as a queasy mirror of real-life social and societal decay. It's not as scary now as it was at the time, but in an era of social media radicalization, it's surprisingly current. You can go online and find pod people pretty much instantly.
