Yahoo Lifestyle Movie Review: The Host
ACTION; M, 2hr 5min
STARRING: Saoirse Ronan, Diane Kruger, Max Irons, William Hurt
Perfection at a price is the watchword of Gattaca writer-director Andrew Niccol’s dreary film of Stephenie Meyer’s wiggy, post-Twilight novel. In a blandly mechanistic future world, robotic human beings, their brains colonised by tentacular, glowy aliens, experience no peaks and valleys. But some uninvaded humans remain in hiding; Melanie (The Lovely Bones’ Ronan), her kid brother, Jamie (Chandler Canterbury), and her lover, Jared (Irons), among them.
Melanie is a cool customer, even after her capture by a fanatical Seeker (Kruger) and her subsequent implantation with alien being Wanderer (voiced by Ronan). She resists Wanderer’s demure presence and they become a wacky team, hunted by the Seeker and reluctantly sheltered by Melanie’s family (Hurt is her unorthodox uncle) in a not-quite-extinct volcano.
The general consensus is that Melanie is irretrievably lost. She’s not, oh yay, but it takes an awful lot of turgid breast-beating for that strange fact to become apparent. Ronan, generally so strong, is hamstrung by her goody-goody alien persona, the men are mopers and the pivotal love triangle is puerile and lame. Peaceable aliens are a tantalising prospect, but evil, perversely, packs a juicier punch.
Andiee's Rating: **
