Promising ideas about a mass single-cell organism and a cell-phone-connected culture float on the outskirts of the plot — it feels like a film cut down from a longer, probably no better movie. Kidman's performance has a rising fierceness that isn't helped by the truncated length.

Director Oliver Hirschbiegel (the German Hitler film "Downfall") doesn't start this story quietly and work it and us to a fever pitch. The rarely used dramatic device, the "flash forward," shows us Carol maniacally rummaging through a ransacked pharmacy in the opening scene. Chases, escapes, near misses also are defused by flash forwards giving away results before the events take place.

Mid- to late August is traditionally a stretch when Hollywood studios unload movies that aren't very good or that it can't figure out how to market. "The Invasion" doesn't fail so miserably as to warrant dumping. But a movie in which the infected win converts by vomiting in their coffee, or in their open mouths, is going to be a hard sell any time.

Even the dogs know that.

"The Invasion" is rated R for language. Running time: 93 minutes.

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E-mail: jeff@desnews.com