This is going to be a quick one.
This disco era remake of the 1956 masterpiece of paranoia updates the story beautifully, as we are taken along for the ride when a group of San Francisco residents try to navigate through a subtle incursion from outer space. Having abandoned their dead world, alien plants land on our world and reproduce by large seed pods that grow next to humans while we sleep. The original human is duplicated and replaced by an identical plant doppelganger that can only be differentiated from the original by its complete lack of emotion. The invasion of replacements is quiet, but it swiftly escalates and those who are not part of the extraterrestrial collective must flee or be subsumed. If unchecked, the encroachment of the plants will spell the end of humanity, but how to fight an invader that wears the faces and bodies of friends, loved ones, authority figures, and whomever else? And who would believe so fantastical a tale if one was able to get the word out?
This quality remake employs the same basic setup as the classic original (only minus the Cold War allegory) and it's every bit as effective, thanks to a solid script, tense direction, and a game cast led by Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright, and Leonard Nimoy. Much like the original, the frisson here is the familiar being twisted into something distant from itself, the loss of individual humanity, and the horror of implacable uniformity.
That's all I will say, because if you have not yet seen it for yourself, there are plenty of surprises that must be experienced cold. Especially one that shocked the shit out of those of us who saw it during first run while we were in junior high school. (If you've seen the film, you know exactly which bit I'm on about.) See the 1956 original, as it still wields considerable power, and also for the sake of comparison, but this version is strong meat that can stand on its own.
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