I wouldn’t go near this film with a bargepole if I had testicles. And I would probably struggle to watch it again without laughing.
I wouldn’t go near this film with a bargepole if I had testicles. And I would probably struggle to watch it again without laughing. That said, I did get a kind of guilty pleasure watching The Host.
The Host is an adaptation of a Stephenie Meyer novel. She is the author who brought us the Twilight Saga and true to form, The Host is a teenage-girl book with dreamy hunks, non-carnal love triangles and a sci-fi edge.
The story takes place in a future where ‘souls’ have taken over the human race, acting as hosts in our bodies. ‘Souls’ are shiny slugs which enter at the base of our skull and make your eyes look like Daniel Craig’s baby blues.
The ‘souls’ are meant to act in harmony with the bodies they inhabit, they like modern architecture, minimalist living, pastel fashion and peaceful order. Typical that Meyer manages to make an alien takeover boring.
The main character is Wanda, a ‘soul’ who is placed inside Melanie Stryder, together played by Saoirse Ronan. Melanie is supposed to be subdued, but her strength of character and love for her brother and boyfriend persevere. In the book, this internal dialogue between Melanie the resident human, and Wanda the host, is easily written, but the translation to film is awkward. Most of the time Saoirse Ronan looks beautifully baffled and Melanie is heard as an inconsistently southern ‘inside voice.’
The problem with The Host is that it is dull and unashamedly directed at teenage girls. It has similar amounts of gazing, pining, passionate kissing with clothes on as the Twilight films. Saoirse Ronan is infinitely more tolerable than Kristen Stewart but and I hope to see her do more credible films in the future. Max Irons will perhaps be M-Irons and his hotness deserves a substantial die-hard fan base, which may at least ease the pressure off Robert Pattinson. It disappoints me that Hollywood has clearly spotted a market with Twilight and has been plugging it with bad films ever since. Teenage girls can have excellent taste—my favourite film when I was thirteen was Scarface.
Despite ripping The Host to shreds, there is a kind of sweet content that can come from curling up in the cinema and watching attractive people find excuses to kiss each other on screen. For example, when you can’t hear the voice inside your head anymore, kiss available hunks until she yells again!
Great advice to schizophrenics.
What do you think? Have you seen The Host? Have your say in the comments section below, on Facebook or on Twitter.
