'The Host' movie review

Yesterday, on the most homosexual day of my life, I went to see The Host, a film based on a Stephenie Meyer novel. Believe it or not, I have actually read the novel and actually liked it. Sure, it has some typical Stephenie-Meyer-sappy-bullshit in it, but the general idea is very interesting, it has this pretty clever "love quadrangle" thingy and I was generally interested in seeing this movie. I knew all along that a giant piece of shit could have been made from the book, but it also had the potential to be a decent sci-fi at its best. So The Host tells the story of Earth being overpopulated by aliens, known as "Souls", that took control of our minds and bodies and made Earth a peaceful place. There still are small groups of human resistance, and when one of the rebels named Melanie gets captured, a Soul named Wanderer is placed inside her body and is set on a quest to reveal the location of the resistance through Melanie's memories. But Melanie is still present in her mind and the two become connected.

If that sounds interesting, it's because it probably is. And in comes out pretty interesting and on an acceptable level of sappyness in the book. How about the movie? Well...let's just say I don't know where to start. The best part were, no exaggeration, the end credits, because they used the song Radioactive in it, which is way too good for this movie, by the way. But seriously, first off: I have no problem with teenage romance, if it is self-aware, not too sappy and executed good with intelligent dialogue and good acting (Beautiful Creatures is a brilliant example). The Host has none of that. Saoirse Ronan does her best and is a truly talented (and adorable) actress, but even she can't save this movie, as she's only as good as the script allows her to be, and that is "alright" at it's best. The rest of the cast is...well, terrible. I don't know how could have they fucked up that, but even the voice actress of Melanie's voice stuck inside her head was terrible. She just made those inner monologue scenes even more laughable and silly and makes me want to create a Golden Razzy category for Worst Voice Acting this year just for this movie. Now one thing I was worried about when anticipating the movie was that it would focus too much on the romance instead of the sci-fi, but I had hope because of Andrew Niccol, who is a very sci-fi director. When I was watching the movie, I didn't feel the movie focused on anything, it just kinda went along. 

The romance parts were unbeliveably laughable of course and the sci-fi ones were also incredibly odd and silly, and I really don't know how can a sci-fi director and writer of The Truman Show fuck that up. There are some changes made from the book that made it include more action, which I was happy about, because the book has no action at all. But even those action scenes are plain painful to watch. There are practically three action scenes in the whole film, the biggest and most spectacular one being a car chase with four vehicles and each of those scenes last about 20 seconds. Yup, 20 seconds. And what's even worse is, that this marks the second time in my history of watching movies, that I found the music in the movie so bad, that I have to mention it (the first time is Johnny English Reborn, so...). The score in The Host is so unbelieveably cheesy and repetitive, and instead of just making a simple, dramatic futuristic sci-fi action score (which I don't believe is that hard if you're a professional composer) The Host constantly gives us these cheesy repetitive violin score bits, that manage to ruin even those 20-second action scenes, so basically you could say there practically isn't any action in The Host.

"It's a strange world, we live in. The strangest." Yup, a Stephenie Meyer novel.

The movie isn't that bad to be honest, but it's still pretty bad. There are some cool shots of silver lotuses and a particular scene where a certain car crashes (triying not to spoil, but there's nothing to be spoiled here), which was actually a good scene, where the cheesy repetitive violin score actually fitted, but otherwise the whole movie is just bad and so sillly, it hurts. When I tought more and more about the movie, I basically realised that you can't really make a good movie out of this book. The creators of this certainly haven't tried their best, but when I kept thinking - for an example, the inner monologue is standable in the book, but even with a better Melanie voice actress or whatever, it would still look stupid in any shape or form. There are also these relationships between the characters, which just look plain stupid in the movie, because you don't enough time to establish time. Like the love quadrangle, the Wanderer starting to like Melanie's boyfriend because Melanie is a part of her, Melanie's brother starting to connect to Wanderer and Melanie inside her, etc. 

All these things sound campy, and that's because they are, but the book has 700 pages and takes time to establish those relationships and in the book...it actually kinda works. It's actually believeable in parts, while the movie just feels incredibly rushed, even tough it's 2 hours long and makes all those scenes with characters willing to die for each other just because they smiled at each other more than once look very silly (hold your horses, I didn't say it's not silly in the book, but it's a lot less silly in the movie). But than the movie would have to be 4 hours long to establish all that, so I've came to a conclusion, that The Host is a practically unfilmable book, which should just stay a book (but sadly, it was announced that it would expand into a trilogy, which means more shitty movies like this). There is one person connected to the movie (not directly connected, anways) that I do have to applaud and that is the trailer's editor. The trailers made the movie actually look kinda cool, even tough if that means showing practically 2 out of 3 of those 20-second action scenes. So in conclusion, The Host is a bad adaptation of an unfilmable book, an incredibly silly, sappy and forgettable sci-fi romance flick with terrible acting and even worse dialogue, which will sadly still probably make tons of money due to Stephenie Meyer's fans. Give the book a shot. 

Total rating: 5 / 10 

So what do you think of this excuse of a movie? How is it compared the book? Is there a thing you actually liked in the movie? Comment below and let me know...please, pretty please.