The Host

What a mess, and I have no prejudice whatsoever about the author of the novel, as I have read nothing by her and have not seen a single Twilight. On the other hand, I thought that The Host might surprise me. But man, that hurt. I like Saoirse Ronan (those unlit eyes!), Diane Kruger and William Hurt, and I know that Andrew Niccol can make (very) good films... But what the hell was all this? Nothing is properly explained, why this and that happened, how it was possible to do that, and the tortured love (double) affair bothered me like nothing I've seen in a long time. I didn't see any (let's say gimmicky) scenes that would have diverted my attention elsewhere, and I had to do a lot to make it to the end. That hasn't happened to me in a long time. Yuck. (12/05/2014)

If you don’t switch your brain off, you’re going to suffer. I’d like to have seen Andrew Niccol’s face when he was reading Stephenie Meyer’s opus and I want to know what pills he was on when he adapted it into a screenplay. In terms of content, The Host is perfectly flat and has the production values of an average TV pilot (cardboard cave interiors, “futuristic” cars painted silver). In terms of logic and message, it involves the completely botched up sci-fi subject matter of “body snatchers”, unnecessarily diluted with a Twilight-esque motif of deciding between two boys. The audience laughed at scenes that were meant to be serious or deep (e.g. the ending). William Hurt reprised the mentor/father role he played in The Village. Diane Kruger looks good in white and was the only thing in the movie that I more or less enjoyed (but only visually). The second star in my rating is just for her. I understand the success of Twilight, I even liked the first instalment, but this is really dumb. You’ll do better to watch Michael Bay’s The Island – it has a message, it is likeable and has good actors, it’s fast-paced, visually polished and offers top-notch action. The Host has NOTHING. (26/03/2013)

Okay, the creators came up with a pretty interesting idea. Melanie and her alien, Wanda, eventually become friends and are able to function in one body. However, Melanie loves one person, and Wanda, based on her understanding of love, falls in love with someone else. It could be quite entertaining, or at least an asylum, because this is a love square that has the shape of a triangle, but all of this is obviously very sterile, and we can't expect the creators to surprise us with anything. No good jokes, no naughtiness, and no proper psychology. In the end, it's just a simple variation of "Twilight," where the girl doesn't choose between a werewolf and a vampire, but between two, pardon my language, idiots. Stephanie Meyer is actually repeating herself, and where she had the werewolf Jacob find love in Bella's daughter - which is a bit creepy, let's be honest, especially when everyone nods approvingly, as if it's the right thing to do - in this case, it's resolved a little more simply. But I won't spoil the ending for you. More: http://www.filmovy-denik.cz/2013/07/hostitel-2013-25.html (15/07/2013)

The idea of two women in one body could surely be used for a heart-rending (without irony) narrative about how difficult it is for a teenage girl to be herself, trust her feelings and not cling to the surface. But that didn’t happened. What did happen is a kitschy, embarrassingly literal knock off of the New Hollywood drama Wanda and, at the same time, an apt product of the society of spectacle in which even one’s soul has to be visualised to please the eye. After most of this remarkably undramatic film, the protagonist of The Host (shouldn’t it rather be The Hostess?) journeys through her own inner world, while the “rational” male characters have to help her find her bearings because of her emotional instability. It wouldn’t matter how little happens over the course of two hours in this film (the “feminine” failure to take action could serve as evidence of ideological subversiveness) if the ideas on which it is based weren’t so extremely stupid. Not only are the anxieties of post-modern society (xenophobia, the need to return to the simplicity of western myths, the emotional aloofness of world inundated with technology, the escape from the global to the local) presented in a midcult wrapper without anything disturbing (when blood appears, it’s a minor holiday), but the filmmakers immediately offer us banal solutions that only support the false illusion that there really is no cause for concern and it suffices if we all love each other and multiply. For each of the few positives (a couple of impressive shots, a hint of a visual concept, the doctor that looks like Obama), there are at least five times as many reasons why it would be better to avoid this offensively flat story about the emotional disjointedness of teenagers (the robotic acting not only by the aliens but also by the Earthlings, no progressive build-up, no suspense, several endings and, mainly, the persistent feeling that someone is trying to make a big damned mountain out of a molehill). Appendix: Fans of Twilight can feel free to ignore my review and rating. 30% (25/03/2013)

It's definitely not science fiction. The introduction has good pace, but the absence of a story deadens the film after twenty minutes, and for the rest of the film a few characters talk boringly to each other in an underground shelter in the desert. The dialogues are banal or even comically naive, there is almost no tension or action (there is only one action scene lasting 20 seconds). The technological aspects do not work because they are not explained in any way during the course of the film. In addition, the creators failed to draw tension, fatefulness or stronger emotions from the scenes. Because of this, the result amount to stupid, superficial, unreliable storytelling empty of content that passes you by without a chance to make a positive impact. (25/03/2013)