The Host

The Host

Director: Andrew Niccol

Considering the Twilight saga brought over 10 hours of sparkly humans and pained expressions to our cinema screens, it’s fair to say I didn’t have huge hopes for The Host, the film adaptation of the sci-fi/romance novel written by Stephanie Meyer in 2008. It didn’t help that it was a Sunday morning, I was hung over and after a long walk to the Octagon had missed the first 10 minutes.

Once I’d got up to date on the back story (an alien species called “Souls” have inhabited the minds of humans and are slowly taking over Earth) I found myself actually quite enjoying it. Saoirse Ronan (think Lovely Bones but less ginger) is Melanie, a human girl fighting against the invasion who is captured and whose body is taken over by one of these souls. Souls are portrayed as spidery, silver “balls of light” that enter a human body through an incision in the neck and proceed to command its thoughts and actions. Once present in a human, the Soul’s main distinction is a disturbing silver iris and tendency to dress only in white.

Melanie’s rebellious and determined consciousness survives within her mind and wrestles with this new Soul, named Wanderer, for control of her body. This leads to plenty of scenes involving internal arguments between Mel (portrayed as an ethereal voiceover) and Wanderer (speaking aloud), which can border on tedious. Generally, though, she pulls off the role pretty well, one perk of which must have been filming the unnecessarily large number of romantic scenes (Mel is in love with one guy while the new mind of Wanderer is after another, resulting in a bit of an awks love triangle).

These scenes are inserted at regular intervals, often as dreams or flashbacks and involving rain, dancing and/or bedsheets. Luckily for Saoirse both suitors are very easy on the eye and leave you feeling that the end of the Earth can’t be that bad. With the all the embraces and long sweeping shots of desert terrain, there isn’t much time left for action, despite the lengthy two-hour running time. A conveniently happy ending even implies the possibility of a sequel, oh the joy.

The Host shouldn’t be judged by its Twilight association and is worth a watch, if only for the boys.

Rating: 3/5

This article first appeared in Issue 6, 2013.
Posted 4:40pm Sunday 7th April 2013 by Fionnuala Bulman.