Andrew Niccol’s “The Host”—based on a sci-fi romance novel
by “Twilight” author Stephenie Meyer—is somewhat intriguing, has a better
premise and contains a much, much better protagonist than “Twilight.” Unlike
the weak and pathetic Bella Swan, the heroine of “The Host,” Melanie (played by
the fantastic up and coming Irish actress Saorise Ronan) is resilient and a
fighter. Since this is a Stephenie Meyer universe Melanie finds herself in a
love triangle (well, actually in the case of this story it’s a “love
quadrilateral” but more on that later) with two young hunks, but unlike the
love triangle in “Twilight,” “The Host” doesn’t completely depend on the
romance to push it along. Yes, in the end Melanie will be with one of those
hunks but she’s still strong and can take care of herself and if this weren’t
written by Meyer maybe she wouldn’t just end up with the guy. Oh well.
As I continued watching, I wanted “The Host” to be good. Not
having read the book, I found myself pleasantly surprised by some of the
developments in the plot and a little twist at the end. But unfortunately the
movie is pretty much undone by a single plot device that’s used all throughout,
and then the other flaws in the film start become more glaring. The set up is
great: in the future earth has been taken over by an unseen alien force that
has injected their souls into the human bodies. It’s an invasion but the souls
don’t see it that way, they see it as perfecting the human race (you know, sort
of an “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” vibe).
One night Melanie (who is part of a small band of humans resisting
the invasion) is captured by the higher up Souls known as the Seekers and is
injected with a soul. However, Melanie is a fighter and so when the alien soul
is put into her body, Melanie’s mind remains. So now she’s of two minds, her
old human self and the new alien who later becomes known as Wanda. One night,
Melanie/Wanda is able to escape (very easily, in fact) and goes out to find her
friends and family.
Now here is where we run into the fatal problem with “The
Host.” Since there are two different minds in one body, we see Wanda talk
through the body and we hear Melanie talk in an echoed voice over. A lot of the
movie concerns the two persons talking to one another, which on film looks like
one person talking to herself. This sort of thing works perfectly fine as a
literary device but it’s nearly impossible to pull it off convincingly in a
drama movie, especially in this story where Wanda and Melanie are talking all
the damn time. It’s laughable, you can’t take it seriously and therefore it
totally undercuts the movie’s serious, dramatic tone. It soon divulges down into
the same unintentional campiness that the “Twilight” films bathed in.
This is all really quite a shame because “The Host” wants to
be taken seriously. Melanie/Wanda eventually finds the band of human survivors
that includes (among others) her uncle Jeb (William Hurt), her brother Jamie
(Chandler Canterbury) and those two young hunks, Jared (Max Irons) and Kyle
(Jake Abel). Together they all try to get along while continuing to resist The
Seekers. There are moments throughout that would be genuinely dramatic and
compelling but sadly can’t be taken one hundred percent seriously. Overall
Niccol’s direction is competent, having directed “Gattaca” he’s no stranger to science
fiction environments, however his handling of the romance scenes between Jared,
Ian, Melanie and Wanda (see what I mean by a “love quadrilateral?”) is
admittedly corny and this not just because of the impossible device. Niccole
stages them with the same glossy sappiness that you would see in a Nicholas
Sparks adaptation (at one point, as Melanie/Wanda and Jared make out, it starts
raining) with cheesy artificial guitar music and all. It also doesn’t help that
Niccol’s script contains terrible lines of dialogue that would still be
terrible even if the device weren’t there.
All of the actors (with the exception of Irons, who delivers
all of his dialogue flatly) do their very best to make the whole thing
credible, especially Ronan who convincingly portrays two different
personalities at the same time. If you weren’t impressed by her acting
abilities before, you should be now. But because the two-minds-in-one-body
story device isn’t believable it dilutes the final product.
Too bad, because “The Host” is still a better made movie
than “Twilight.” Sigh.
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