“This is one of the best subjects imaginable: not only does the man disappear, but another version of him takes his place. Don Siegel directs the film well and with talent, yet understandably the direction is quite subtle compared to what Daniel Mainwaring’s idea announces and implies (and this was a few years before lonesco!). It’s as if, not surprisingly, ably discussing what has yet to happen (like the end of the world) is difficult. What is surprising is that science fiction films are in fact those in which a sense of the unusual is less conspicuous – the idea of the Other is seen as something domestic and ordinary. (…) Don Siegel’s film is, first and foremost, a noteworthy picture of everyday life in an American small town (Santa Mira). The first sequences, in which the mystery is constantly implied through daily routines and mundane conversations, are perfectly executed. As the mystery is revealed and looses its mysteriousness, the film becomes less interesting, and I must confess that the giant pods are not frightening at all – on the contrary. Yet Siegel’s nonchalance in portraying the “family circle” is not without significance. A good rule for making a surprising event even more surprising is to focus one’s attention on a closed environment in this case a family environment in which the slightest change in routine takes on unnerving (and disproportionate) proportions. Thus the end of the world is always what happens to a family, to intimacy, the condition of anything that violates all intimacy. When filming The Birds, Hitchcock never lost sight of this simple rule (which works to its own advantage by making intimacy a possible cause for catastrophe). There is a precise distance between Hitchcock’s masterpiece and Siegel’s film. From Santa Mira to Santa Bodega”.

Serge Daney, L’invasion des profanateurs de sépultures, “Cahiers du Cinéma”, Paris, n. 197, January 1968