"Just think. Less than a month ago. . .

. . .Santa Mira was just like any other town. People with nothing but problems! Now, you're reborn, into an untroubled world."

"Where everyone is the same?"

"That's right."

"But I don't want to live in a world without love or grief or beauty! I'd rather be dead!"

Watch the original 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers here.

They say this movie was not supposed to be a metaphor for anything. That's fine. It's doesn't take away from the fact that it is.

"We" perhaps were paranoid about the wrong things back in 1956. Later, the hippies protested, but I contend that the baby boom generation were about as conformist as any, if not more.

Of course, I am wildly oversimplifying here, but the truth is, we've mostly gone to sleep, happily. . .

As Dr. Bennett says in the movie, "In my practice, I've seen how people allow their humanity to drain away. It happens slowly instead of all at once. They don't seem to mind."

No, they don't. Now they ask for it. They ask their doctors.

We've brought back the once considered barbaric electroconvulsive "therapy" for folks who are "treatment resistant" to drugs. Perhaps we should look forward to a renaissance of lobotomy, or maybe we'll learn to grow pods of perfectly happy people.

I'm kidding, of course, but then again. . .

We have all been assimilated.

Image note: Before torching the pod he found planted in his car's trunk, Miles (Dr. Bennett) pokes it a bit.