One of the most terrifying films ever made was John Carpenter’s They Live, part sci-fi thriller and part social satire, told the story of a down-on-his-luck construction worker (Roddy Piper) who discovers glasses that let him see aliens walking among us and controlling humanity. With a remake long in the works, Cloverfield and Let Me In director Matt Reeves hopes to tell his own version that’s heavily inspired by the long-pondered conspiracy theory that’s definitely chilling.

Deadline reports that Reeves has signed on at Universal Pictures to write and direct a feature based on the famed Ray Nelson short story 8 O’Clock in the Morning, with Strike Entertainment partners Eric Newman and Marc Abraham producing.

“The story is about a man who awakens one morning with the crystal-clear realization that we are surrounded daily by the presence of aliens that are controlling society.”

The interesting part of the story is that it was owned by the studio because it was used as the basis for the 1988 John Carpenter film They Live. In that film, aliens were discovered through the use of special glasses. None of that is being used here, and the film is not considered a remake.
“I saw an opportunity to do a movie that was very point-of-view driven, a psychological science fiction thriller that explores this guy’s nightmare, Reeves told the site. “There could be a desperate love story at the center of this. Carpenter took a satirical view of the material and the larger political implication that we’re being controlled. I am very drawn to the emotional side, the nightmare experience with the paranoia of ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ or a Roman Polanski-style film.”