Delayed by two years and with the Wachowski Brothers and V for Vendetta director James McTeigue replacing Oliver Hirschbiegel on re-shoot duty, The Invasion was labelled a flop before anyone saw it.

But, with a premise this solid and a classy cast including support from Jeremy Northam and Craig’s Casino Royale co-star Jeffrey Wright, there is little danger of the audience nodding off.

The fourth official version of Jack Finney’s novel, this follows Don Siegel’s classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Philip Kaufman’s masterful 1978 remake, and Abel Ferrara’s underrated 1993 Body Snatchers.

Ultimately however, due to soapy subplots and a cop-out ending, it more resembles Robert Rodriguez’s cheeky rip-off, The Faculty.

After a shuttle explodes returning to Earth, the debris sports an alien fungus that infects anyone it comes into contact with. Government expert Northam - ex-husband of Kidman’s shrink Carol - is soon transformed into an emotionless 'other', albeit with a desire to see her and his son.

Carol spots other odd occurrences, from a patient (cameo-ing Veronica Cartwright from the '78 version) claiming her abusive husband is not his usual clenched fist self, to conspiratorial commuters and blank-faced children.

When Carol's beau Ben (Craig) discovers a friend undergoing a particularly icky transformation the race is on to spread the word, stay awake, and get the hell out of town.

The script sports wry satire – news reports chart a peace pandemic encircling the globe, suspicious relatives set up internet chat groups, the aliens question how Carol doping patients is different from their plan – and a possible Wachowski addition of projectile vomit spreading the contagion permits some gross-out disease paranoia.

But, shockingly clunky dialogue and Kidman’s attempts to rescue her son makes this as much Flightplan as classic sci-fi.

Luckily, Downfall director Hirschbiegel can knock out an effective thriller about malevolent automatons, and the first hour includes fail safe moments of suspense – eerily calm crowds loading hysterical people into ambulances, passive aliens turning howling banshee and chasing down the unaffected. The gun-toting, car chase climax, however, is clearly test audience invention.

Kidman, Craig and Northam’s commitment suggests they believed this would be a hit, but The Invasion ironically emerges as a po-faced, bloodless carbon copy of the smarter, livelier versions that came before.

Rob Daniel