Travis Lytle’s review published on Letterboxd:
Tobe Hooper goes the Joe Dante route with "Invaders from Mars," a family-friendly remake of the same-named 1953 science fiction/horror film. A plot to turn townspeople into mindless drones, gooey alien creatures, and an elementary school-aged hero come together for a film that offers watchable and mostly innocuous fun.
The story is the straightforward stuff of B-movies: martians land on Earth and begin to convert humans into mind-controlled slaves. A suspicious young boy starts to question the local strangeness and soon becomes a hero in the battle to rid the town of the space-borne threat.
Hooper's eye for interesting angles and compositions adds some visual panache to the affair, while the special effects are nicely accomplished. The director keeps the energy up and the action moving even when the story becomes flat after its premise is established. Performances are suitable for the film and its style, Karen Black, Timothy Bottoms, Laraine Newman and a host of familiar faces filling out the cast.
"Invaders from Mars" is never deep or engrossing, but it supplies enough entertaing, B-movie fun to be, at least, engaging. The narrative misses plenty of opportunities to make itself stand out, and the climax saps some of the film's established goodwill; but the experience as a whole is nearly pleasing.