They Live takes a note from “pod people” classics like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which an alien race replaces people’s loved ones with emotionless, inhuman copies.
So what do you get when you marry the pod-people of They Live and Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the walking dead, a total denial of the past’s lessons?
Your Film History 101 teacher would say that Invasion of the Body Snatchers is an allegory for McCarthyism and the loss of personal autonomy in a Communist society.
The movie tells of a society controlled by a series of subliminal messages supplied by a ruling alien force.