(Photo Courtesy of thehostfilm.com)Pitchforks: 1/5
Rated: PG-13
Released: March 29, 2013
Stephanie Meyer, the author of the Twilight saga" graces audiences once again to another romantically forced, manipulative story about “pretty boys” falling hopelessly in love with a bland female protagonist. The real shame of this movie is that the director of this arduous exercise is Andrew Niccol.
Andrew Niccol is the director of the fantastic science fiction movie “Gattaca” and screenwriter of “The Truman Show.” How Andrew Niccol got involved with a Stephanie Meyer movie is beyond comprehension (for the money perhaps). “The Host” proves that even a talented director isn’t able make Meyer’s work watchable.
“The Host” stars Saoirse Ronan, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in “Atonement” back in 2007. Why’s she is in this movie is also perplexing, but that paycheck was probably quite convincing.
She plays Melanie, who lives in a world where the majority of the population has been possessed by parasitic aliens. Melanie becomes infected as well with an alien named Wanderer, but she fights back for control to reunite with her loved ones, who are in hiding. When she joins up with her loves ones, what happens next in the story? Nothing. They just sit and talk. Then they talk some more, and then the movies ends.
The locations and sets in this movie are so few in number that the story could have rather been made into a preschool play. The characters are so uninteresting and indiscernible that there are moments where the audiences will not be able to tell which “pretty boy” is doing the action. Their faces all look the same. Moreover, the movie isn’t just anti-climatic: It literally has no climax.
Andrew Niccol directs one of the most boring movies of 2013 so far. “The Host” is a science fiction film that is devoid of any tension or suspense. The most suspenseful moment happens in the first five minutes, and it swiftly goes downhill from there.
When the aliens are looking for Melanie, they send four “Seekers” after her. The planet is filled with an army of possessed people; how is it that the aliens weren’t able to utilize more reinforcements? The movie never shows how drastic the situation is for the surviving humans, or the magnitude of the invasion, which leaves much to be desired while watching it.
When the Seekers give up their search — and they quickly give up for no apparent reason — one of the aliens continues to hunt her down. She takes her chrome helicopter and flies over their hideout once, and that’s it. This is a very boring movie.
This is a very minimalistic science fiction movie. All the vehicles in this movie are chrome. They aren’t more advanced in any way, they’re just chrome. Why? Audiences just have to assume that “everything is chrome in the future." And, besides the different colored eyes and the aliens’ spray medicine, nothing else screams science fiction, which really shows how lazy the film is with the genre.
The romance is there. It happens. There aren’t any opposing threats, so there isn’t even a time where the audience believes that the characters won’t fall in love in the end. Everything about this movie is monotonous. “The Host” just goes through the motions without trying to be new or different. Overall, "The Host" is incredibly dull and painful to watch.
Reach the reporter at tverti@asu.edu
