Sadly, Robin Cook's Invasion is not about an invasion led by craptastic writer Robin Cook. (Or, as the opening credits state, Dr. Robin Cook.)

Would that it was -- it would have been a far better experience. Too bad then that this three-hour rehash of an endless series of movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and even video games like Parasite Eve is as hokey and derivative as they come. What makes this miniseries-cum-DVD wholly unpalatable is how poorly it is written, a feat matched only by the shallowness of its acting.

Luke Perry positively reeks in the worst performance of his life, uttering lines with the faux gravity of Brando like, "I... understand." As Perry plays a mild-mannered basketball coach who becomes the leader of the alien-invader race -- pus-filled sores and all -- you can image the effect his words have on his cronies.

The film, idiotic from the first scene, tells us that a presumably magic pebble dropped from the sky infects those who touch it by "biting" them, activating a latent virus to turn them into some kind of freaky aliens and convincing them to build a "gateway" to the stars. Never mind that the gateway looks like two quonset huts with a few ten-gallon jugs inside it. And never mind that the medical doctor who spearheads the search for an "antibody" (something about Rh-negative blood, endlessly repeated here) to cure the metamorphosis. And never mind that the girl who ends up helping her out is Perry's character's wife, a schoolteacher played to vacuous effect by Rebecca Gayheart.

Shall I continue describing Invasion's lack of drama, cornball scenes, ripped-off sequences, and laughable title cards -- "876,440,972 infected"? If these aliens are so precise, how come they're so extremely, extremely stupid? God, I feel sick that I wasted three hours on this.

Five bucks if you can guess how it ends. Not really.