The Host (2013) - Review

Say what you want about the Twilight movies, but they’re really really funny.  I (thanks to Goodwill) am even now a proud owner of the Twilight board game!  The Twilight series is incompetent in just about every conceivable way.  It’s easy to pin a lot of that blame on the author of the original work, Stephanie Meyer, and after having seen the adaptation of her other movie, The Host, I’m inclined to agree.  Either way, it’s clear that whoever had their hands in this movie had no idea what a three-act structure is, because this is a bizarrely terrible, meandering mess.

A quick trip to IMDb has told me that this was written for the screen and directed by Andrew Niccol, who brought us Gattaca and Lord of War, plus he wrote The Truman Show.  That’s not a bad lineup actually, so I’m tending to lean towards Stephanie Meyer just sucks, but I haven’t read the book, so the jury’s out on that.

It’s not like the actors are helping.  To combat the alien “menace” (which is another problem I have that I’ll get back to) we have several unknowns.  The only actor I even recognized was Diane Kruger from the National Treasure series and Inglorious Basterds.

"Please God, get us out of this awful mess!"

Well, I take that back, Adam Milligan from Supernatural was also in this - he’s okay actually.  Saoirse Ronan, our Shailene Woodley for the day, doesn’t do terribly most of the time, but there are several weird scenes where she has conversations with herself in her head (which only makes marginally more sense in the film) that are really forced and embarrassing to watch.

Okay, here’s my bigger problem with the plot: yeah, the aliens are basically killing all the humans.  So what?  From the scenes that show the aliens interacting with each other, I don’t know why we shouldn’t let them.  They function much better as a species with much more compassion and understanding for each other than humans do.  Just let them take over, because all the humans in this movie are annoying as hell.

The biggest issue with this movie is that it’s not funny.  It just isn’t.  The acting is fairly bad, the script is beyond terrible, and the pacing is a total joke, but I’m not laughing.  Twilight has awkwardness to hang its hat on, but this can’t even do that right.  It may have been the worst movie I saw in 2014.  If not, it’s at least Top 2.  Steer clear.