We breathed a sigh of relief when
the last Twilight movie left the
theaters. We thought it was the end of the horrible, terrible teen centric
romantic horse manure hitting movie screens. We thought it was the end of our
suffering. We thought wrong. Say hello to The
Host, a new film series from the mind of the genius who came up with Twilight.
Like Twilight, the book series The
Host was targeted towards lost, lonely, juvenile preteens who found solace
in reading about characters who were just like them. That series didn’t sell as
well, but now with the Twilight movies
solidifying author Stephanie Meyer’s brand, one can expect the books to fly off
the shelves. Whether the film versions of The
Host would sell tickets is another thing, because, as hard as it is to
believe, it is actually even more horrendous than the Twilight movies.
The story is exactly the same as
the Bella-Edward-Jacob love triangle, except with an unintentionally hilarious
science fiction twist. Here we have a world where an alien invasion has resulted
in otherworldly beings taking over every single human’s body, thereby making
the Earth a clean, fresh, and kind utopia. A small group of uninfected humans
remain, who fight against the invaders and strive to continue the human
civilization. One of the humans is Melanie (Saoirse Ronan) who has recently
been taken over by an alien being, and is now battling with the alien to take
control over her body. The Twilight love
triangle in this case is two men falling in love with the two entities in the
one body.
The waxy bores Kristen Stewart,
Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner are outdone by the trio of moldy wood boxes
in The Host. Sadly The Host isn’t funny enough to warrant a
guilty pleasure of a watch, but it does contain one of the most inadvertently
rib tickling scenes of all time, where the two boys kiss the girl one after the
other to ascertain which of the two girls they are smooching. The most
saddening thing about The Host isn’t
the fact that stuff like this makes millions for Stephanie Meyer, but that it
is directed by Andrew Niccol, who made Gattaca,
one of the greatest, most imaginative and inspiring science fiction films
of all time. The only explanation for him volunteering to go behind the cameras
for this movie is a sadistic alien from another planet taking over his body and
mind to unleash crap into our world.
(First published in Mid Day)