‘Body Snatchers’

Abel Ferrara hasn’t merely remade “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” Jack Finney’s classic pulp science-fiction tale of sinister pods from outer space who take over unsuspecting humans and turn them into unfeeling automatons. He has reimagined it and reinvigorated it for this 1994 version, using the best of special-effects talent and cool directorial skill to turn out a splendidly creepy and unsettling piece of genre filmmaking. One thing that Ferrara and his five writers have done is to change the emphasis from the protest against conformity, which characterized the 1956 Don Siegel version, to focus on the more modern terror of paranoia. This time the story is shrewdly set at an Army base in the South, where people are so habitually obedient that it is doubly difficult to determine who is a soulless pod and who is just following orders. With Meg Tilly (pictured), Gabrielle Anwar, Terry Kinney and Forest Whitaker. (Cinemax Friday at 8 p.m.)