Build a movie plot around this: When does the spore take over the brain? During REM sleep
The answer to this question is:
After the space shuttle Patriot crashes on Earth, a fungus-like alien lifeform is discovered on the remaining parts scattered over US territory. Once people come into contact with the organism, they are controlled by it when they enter REM sleep. One of the first people infected is Tucker Kaufman, a CDC director investigating the crash.Tucker's ex-wife, psychiatrist Carol Bennell, begins to feel something is amiss when people seem to have "changed". Her patient Wendy Lenk describes how her husband "is not her husband", and one of her son's friends acts detached and emotionless. At a neighborhood Halloween party, Carol's son Oliver finds a "skin" on a partier which is initially believed to be costume make-up. Carol speculates that the skin may be an organism connected to reports of a fast-spreading flu. Carol takes the organism to her doctor friend Ben Driscoll to have it checked. Carol attends a friendly dinner meeting between Russian diplomat Yorish and Czechoslovakian diplomat Belicec (along with female companion Luddie) and discusses her post-modern feminism views over caviar and champagne. Meanwhile, Tucker uses the CDC to spread the disease further, disguising the spores as flu vaccine.Ben and Dr. Stephen Galeano, a biologist, discover how the spore takes over the brain during REM sleep. During this investigation Luddie calls Ben, worried about Yorish's behavior. Driscoll and Galeano also find that people who had brain affecting illnesses, such as encephalitis or ADEM, are immune to the spore because their previous illnesses prevents the spore from "latching on" to the brain matter. Carol's son, Oliver, is immune to the spore because of the ADEM he had as a young child. Carol decides to get her son, who might show a way to a cure, back from Tucker. Before she drives to Tucker's house, she joins Ben's team who is called to the house of the Belicecs, the Czech ambassador and his wife, in a case of emergency. There they witness the transformation of Yorish, the Russian ambassador and the Belicecs'...