Review: THE HOST

Having finish her vampire, werewolf and little girls with serious emotional problems-saga, Stephanie Meyer got going on a new story, though not a fantasy/horror/romance one, but a sci-fi. This film has already left theaters in the U.S., but for those of you who didn't get around to see it, here is our review of "THE HOST".

Oh how much would we love to do this review without all the emotion we have going on after leaving the movie-theater just a couple of hours ago, but we can't do that as it would make this a dishonest review anyway.

We are not going to sugarcoat this: "THE HOST" is a terrible movie.

The main idea (not exactly the plot), though used to death before, isn't really bad, quite the contrary, it is interesting and if worked by a more experienced writer than Meyer, it could have been good. Unfortunately this version is not even remotely interesting. It is an endless array of contradictions in a story that is as flat as the Arizona desert.

It all goes around 'Melanie', a young woman part of the human rebellion against alien beings who arrive on Earth to implant themselves in our bodies. They aren't after anything in particular other than experimenting with us and in exchange, they will bring peace to our world and help us live carefree lives.

Anyways, the aliens implant ‘Melanie’ in the very first sequence in the film and from then on we see 'it' taking control of her body, but Melanie's soul, mind, or something (the movie never really explains what) fights to get control of her body back and we are forced to hear her in OFF for two long hours (OFF means you hear the actor's voice but don't see him/her on screen, though you do see her in this movie in a different way).

The technical aspects didn't help the film either.

The art department showed no imagination to set a post-invasion world; the few sets you see have nothing really interesting on them and seem unrealistic.

The editing feels heavy, slow and boring. The narrative is all over the place. The only action sequence in the film doesn't even have adequate music to back it up and if it wasn't for the guns fired, you'd have no idea it has the intention of getting you excited.

The cinematography and lighting were horribly directed, and example of this is: much of the story takes place on the inside of a desert mountain with very low light, however the characters are lit as if they were acting in a soap opera- over-the-head light as intense as humanly possible.

The young woman playing 'Melanie' was Soairse Ronan, who did the best she could at all times, but unfortunately for her it wasn't enough to save the film.

In this blog we are HUGE fans of well-crafted villains (see our review of STAR TREK 2); in "THE HOST" the villain is laughable, represents no real threat at all and has a very disappointing ending.

The ending, to keep everything on the same tune, is pulled out of a magician's hat; ridiculous, explained only half-way and poor to say the least.

To those of you who don't know, we were very generous and kind as we let go of the obvious mistakes in the "TWILIGHT" saga, if you don't believe us check out our review of "BREAKING DAWN PART 2", we gave it a 'Worth the Ticket Price'. We mention this so you don't think that we went to see this movie wanting to hate it just because it was based on a Stephanie Meyer novel.