Post by StevePulaski on Apr 7, 2013 15:15:07 GMT -5
Saoirse Ronan.
Rating: ★½
The Host is a convoluted, tedious film that shortchanges its interesting science-fiction setup in favor of a lesser, more romantically-involved storyline. Being The Host was based on a novel written by the Twilight author Stephenie Meyer, I think I've begun to crack the code on her encompassing goal as an author. It appears she is trying to find how interesting plots and stories can be reworked and imagined to have a romantically-charged personality to them. Her Twilight series focused on vampires and werewolves; two very unromantic things that were made very romantic thanks to the direction and tone of the films and the novels. Now comes The Host, billed as a more adult picture, when really, it is just more muchness that we've seen before, only we're a bit more grounded in reality, but not by much.
The plot: Earth has now become invaded by little tiny glowworms that latch on to the spines of humans and dismantle all their ability to make free will and conscious choices. Melanie (Saorise Ronan), one of the few remaining humans, has just gotten her body and soul taken over by another young girl named Wanda (also known as "Wanderer"), only Melanie survives and is able to communicate to Wanda as a voice inside her head. Melanie tries to get Wanda to reunite "her" with her own family, a group of survivalists living out in the middle of nowhere. When they finally meet up with them, what unfolds is a trivial and predictable love triangle between bland, unimaginative characters and rather similar to a love triangle we were blessed with in another recent series.
As unfair as it is to compare The Host to Twilight, when Meyer clearly tried to differentiate the two books, it is pretty ignorant to neglect the similarities between the two. After viewing two of the Twilight films, one I liked and the other not-so-much, I simply felt that the story wasn't for me and I should direct my attention to better works. The Host, however, markets itself neutrally, while Twilight clearly was interested in providing the world with female fanfare. The entire series wound up pleasing the ladies, while receiving hate from the men. This film doesn't feel like it will please anyone, men and women alike. It tries to offer the increasing commonality of a female protagonist/adventurer, yet she comes off as a third-rate Katniss from The Hunger Games rather than an admirable individual.
I also must stress how annoying and unintentionally funny it is when Melanie and Wanda begin arguing with each other. Since Melanie is trapped in Wanda's (or her own) head, she is left with the only option to speak in incessant, bratty narration, making this film almost unable to take seriously. Rather than feeling like a human-spirit conflict, it feels like the little bratty five-year-old who is stuck in an unfair circumstance and constantly whines. As you can expect, this makes the likability of both characters dwindle down to virtually nothing and makes for an even longer, more tedious viewing.
The photography is one of the few things I can praise here, as it is futuristic without being too distracting. I was especially taken by the chrome-tinted vehicles and spacious desert scenery that often punctuates the picture. This is one of the few things that kept me in-tuned during the lengthy, seemingly endless second-half of this film, which proved more inert and stuffy than that of the Twilight pictures. The dramatic tension is slim, and worst of all, the characters are nothing worth noting or even listening to. They just continue to drone on and on about their predicament, and after just an hour of watching them function in a romantic story that really should be a science-fiction one, is when you really begin to feel all the potential for this kind of a story melt away.
The Host was directed by Andrew Niccol, whose film Gattaca I just named "one of the best science-fiction films of the nineties" upon rewatching it. Niccol has a way for concocting poetic visuals with a story that is cold yet very interesting. However, here, the story is cold and that's where the line is drawn. The characters feel one-dimensional, the plot is a complete muddle, and the actors often feel robotic and not in the same way as Gattaca, where they felt detached from the current boundaries of life and humanity. Here, the actors feel detached from the slow, methodical material that, even if it is spread through the course of two hours, still feels like a muddle. This is one of the dullest pictures of the year.
NOTE: My video review of The Host, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp-CxHKwmqc
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Jake Abel, Max Irons, Chandler Canterbury, Frances Fisher, Diane Kruger, and William Hurt. Directed by: Andrew Niccol.