Hello, welcome to my blog.
I was dragged to see this film by a friend of a friend and my friend (if that makes sense) and lets just say I was less than enthusiastic about sitting through this after seeing the trailers and would have much preferred to see The Hardy Bucks, but I was outvoted two to one. I decided to put my reservations of seemingly stiff acting and a wooly script to one side and go into “The Host” with an open mind – not easy to do when you learn this movie is based off a novel by Stephanie Meyer who brought us Twilight. If nothing else, I would enjoy my popcorn.
Our story is set in the future; Earth has been invaded by alien life forms (or “souls” as we come to know them) who inhabit a dead human body as a parasite would a host. These hosts then live in a Stepford Wife style world, where no body lies, and everyone leads a perfect life with their matching electric blue eyes. The last few remaining resistant humans are seen as a threat to the 1984 style Utopia created by the parasite-souls, and these are hunted by Seekers.
Our heroine Melanie (Saoirse Ronan) who is part of the human resistance,courageously kills herself to save her kid brother from a seeker in the opening scenes. The Seekers take Melanie’s body and implant in it a new soul, her name is Wanderer. Wanderer is a kind, curious soul who has lived over a thousand years and traveled hundreds of galaxies. All is fine and rosy in the garden then right? No such luck for me to get out of the cinema that early! Wanderer soon discovers a little voice in her head – yea that awful Looooooseeanna accent coming from nowhere is of course the voice of Melanie, even in death she is resistant (and annoying). And so we have our plot – Wanderer, an alien soul/parasite who is sharing her human shell with the human’s soul Melanie.
Wanderer is instructed to purge all information from Melanies mind to the seekers, so they can find the resistasnt humans and dispatch them, but of course Wanderer becomes conflicted. Especially after feeling human emotions such as the love of Melanie for her beau Jared (Max Irons).
Now for the first and possibly the main problem with this film – The inner struggle between Melanie and Wanderer is carried out using voice overs and asides, that horrible Louisiana accent symbolising Melanie and Wanderer’s neutral elocutions. It’s just. . . . . awkward. I can’t think of any other way to describe it, the little pauses and to and fros between the two characters may play out well on paper (I actually have no idea, have never read the book, do not intend to) but on screen it is positively cringe-worthy. I keep thinking “It won’t be like this for the whole film” – but no, it was. The story eventually develops to a point where Wanderer/Melanie end up at human resistance HQ, where some of Melanie’s relatives and a few others have been living off underground crops and raiding the alien’s megastores. Wanderer is initially met with suspicion, but of course eventually earns their trust. I will try not to give the plot away as there may be some out there genuinely wanting to see this – let just say certain feelings crop up between Melanie and Jared, and Wanderer for another human in the resistance, Ian. Now for my second biggest problem. The “love” scenes are just awful. Some of the most stiff and awkward scenes I have seen this year. I realise Ronan and her cohorts in this movie may not be old and wise lovers, but the way the characters portray love and lust is positively juvenile. It is here they might aswell place a huge flashing sign saying “THIS MOVIE IS FOR TWEENAGE GIRLS ONLY” and even if that is their excuse, I feel like even a 14 year old would feel shortchanged with some of the exchanges between Melanie and Jared in particular. I do not feel this is the actors fault, I for one would love to see Saoirse Ronan play a role as a woman – here she is distinctly a girl, like so many of her other roles. It is just poor story telling and poor film making.
The film drags around this point, a very drawn out and obvious ending is spoiled by an entirely unnecessary final scene. I was left thinking why? why even put in that final 5 minutes of footage? Oh no that ending wasn’t quite perfect enough, lets put a bow on top of it too! Give the viewer some credit, please. We will not be emotionally damaged if absolutely everything doesn’t work out 100% for the best.
This film certainly has its problems – I haven’t even mentioned the world’s most boring villain in The Seeker (Kruger) or the numerous plot holes – they pale in comparison to the biggies, trust me! But it is not AWFUL. There are some good points – Saoirse Ronan puts in another solid performance as our heroine(s) although as I said, we need to see her play a strong woman in her next role in order for her to truly flourish as an actress. Another detail I enjoyed in this film was costume design. It was slick and futuristic, clean white lines for the Seekers and dirty scruffy Earth tones for the humans. Melanie falls inbetween the two, with dashes of colour. The symbolism was stark and clever. Small details like this make me believe that the director at least attempted to make something beautiful.
All in all, not a good movie, but also not awful. I guess overall I feel disappointed, because it has such a clever concept that it had the potential to be good – Imagine this film with real violence, real lust and real style, with a kick ass leading female and a merciless villain. The possibilities! I give it 3 out of 10.
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