The Host (2013)

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  TheMovieDiorama

  3 / 10

  The Host took control of my body and nearly forced me to turn it off. "By Stephenie Meyer, author of The Twilight Saga". Three young beautiful adults on the front cover. Wonderful taglines like "choose to love". The warnings were there, and I did not adhere to them. Ohhh silly me. This is yet another example of an intriguing concept being executed in the most generically dull method ever. A love triangle? Really? Well, more like a love parallelogram. A parasitical alien race have invaded Earth and search for hosts to control. An organism named Wanderer is implanted into a young girl where she refuses to relinquish control. A simple case of a seemingly antagonistic entity learning the strength of humanity and betraying their own kind to better understand the emotional complexity of human beings. Alas, what we actually get is an alien romanticising with a man whilst simultaneously the same girl falls back in love with another guy. The girl and organism being in the same body, this creates a conflict of interest. Forget about the interesting derequisition of humanity. Put aside the slick chrome plated vehicles and the minimalistic design, both architecturally and decoratively. We have to settle for a boring, lifeless love story. 'Twilight: Loving Hosts'. Niccol takes the source material of Meyer's "ingenious imaginative" novel and manages to lengthen an unloving love story to over two hours. Stilted performances, with a few glimpses of excellence from Ronan and Kruger, a lifeless screenplay that removes any humanity that the human characters have. They are just as soulless as the hosts. The script insistently references life as a bigger picture, attempting to be philosophical, but actually its just words conveniently strung together creating weightless sentences. It's all set in a cave. The ending was stupendously cheesy. The only saving grace was Imagine Dragons' 'Radioactive'. So aside from some minor scenes of genuine entertainment, The Host climbs inside a thought provoking concept and struggles to do anything meaningful with it. I shan't be reading the book, that's a fact.

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