The story centers on a man who awakes one day to realize that our society is comprised of and secretly controlled by aliens. The Ray Nelson short story served as the inspiration for They Live, but Reeves’ version will take a completely different approach than John Carpenter‘s.

“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 tells Deadline. “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.”

Matt Reeves is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. He caught a lot of flack when he made Let Me In, a remake of beloved genre entry Let The Right One In. So, though he’ll tell a different story than Carpenter did, he’s sure to encounter some divisiveness. Also, Ray Nelson is the original inventor of the propeller beanie. How could anyone ever fill his shoes?