THE HOST: in cinemas now [short review]

The Host (2013)
Directed by: Andrew Niccol
Written by: Andrew Niccol
Starring: Diane Kruger, Jake Abel, Max Irons, Saoirse Ronan

IN CINEMAS NOW

RUNNING TIME:125 mins

REVIEWED BY: Dr Lenera, Official HCF Critic

In the future, the human race has been assimilated by benevolent extraterrestrial psychic parasites called “Souls”. Human Melanie Stryder is captured by the Seeker while trying to find her family and infused with a soul called “Wanderer”, in order to discover the location of one of the last pockets of non-assimilated humans. However, Melanie survives the procedure and begins to struggle for control of her body. The Seeker decides to put Wanderer in a different body, but before she can do so Wanderer escapes with Melanie…..

So here we go again, another attempt to attract the hordes of teenage girls who felt like killing themselves when the last Twilight film ended [actually, so did I, but for a different reason], and this one is also based on a Stephanie Meyer book which had sequels. Guess what? It’s awful. Now I haven’t read [and never will] a Meyer book so I’ll take people’s words for it that her writing improved since Twilight. You wouldn’t know it from this film, which takes a half-decent premise [influenced by Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and The Puppet Masters, but that’s hardly bad] and, as with Twilight, like a vampire sucks all the life, energy and fun out of it. I don’t like to use the word ‘boring’ to describe a film, because a slow film can be as engrossing as a fast film, but it perfectly describes The Host which, in lieu of the story’s promise, spends most of its time on chatting [badly of course; once again Meyer characters just spell everything out] in caves, another excruciating love triangle, and Saoirse [o why, Saoirse, you’re one of the finest young actresses around today and this shit is beneath you] having a voice inside her head objecting to whatever she is doing. The society of trust-worthy aliens is neat and there’s some decent desert photography, but overall this is rubbish, and it appears to be flopping thank God.

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