After reading the entire Twilight series, I didn’t think that any Stephenie Meyer book could ever be anything close to actual literature. I was right. The Host, an independent ‘novel’ is really just another sappy love story which Meyer attempts to make ‘different’ with some science-fiction type of underlying story. While “The Host” was a better story than Twilight, in the end, the faulty writing and inept story line draws attention away from some actual interesting aspects. While the book itself did portray an intriguing plot, the movie itself shadows that with the overwhelming love story that could have been less ostentatious.
The Book:
The main plot of the book is that Earth has been invaded by extraterrestrial species named “souls” who take over the human body and replace it with a new soul. These souls are apparently vicious to the humans, because they erase what it means to be human and represses the human within the body. However, the souls find that they have done a favor on the human race by eradicating warfare, violence, and bloodshed by replacing the battle worn Earth with a peaceful, serene, and calm place to live. While most of the humans have been invaded, there still remain many humans who are in hiding, trying to stay away from the Seekers (those who search for humans to use as a host,) and live by stealing food from houses and stores.
The book starts with Melanie Stryder, the main protagonist, undergoing insertion and having a soul put into her body. The soul, Wanderer, begins to adapt to her life in a human host, but is irritated by the constant resistance Melanie puts up inside of her head. As Wanderer tries to fight Melanie’s voice in her head, she also sees all of Melanie’s memories, and becomes aware of her lover, Jared Howe as well as her beloved kid brother, Jamie. Melanie coaxes Wanderer into running away from a specific Seeker who is very keen on learning about Melanie’s memories to locate the other humans, and they end up near death in a desert, where finally Melanie’s Uncle Jeb finds them. He takes them to a cave that he set up with his family, a cave where over 20 humans are living.
The story continues with Melanie and Wanderer (nicknamed Wanda) adapting to their new life in the cave, befriending the humans and helping them with their attempts to survive, until a twist towards the end provides some excitement. However, the book is so unnecessarily long it’s difficult to keep going towards that point of the book.
While the story does seem to be decent, the entirety of the book is written in such a way that it does not do justice to the story. The story is pushed aside for most of the book and focused more on the Jared/Melanie-Wanda love story, adding in another boy, Ian O’Shea, in as well, probably an attempt by Meyer to “spice it up,’ but it doesn’t work. Again, you see Melanie-Wanda being the Bella Swan type of protagonist, willing to sacrifice all of her happiness for the happiness of others while everyone else is bent on saving her life, but she doesn’t show any appreciation for it. But again, there is no authenticity because it is so unrealistic. Comparing Bella to Melanie-Wanda, they are the same people with two different names.
The plot is so simplistic and with no underlying meanings. It actually is a very shallow book, with no surprises the second time you read it. And I didn’t even bother wasting my time on that. There is no originality, and it’s something you’ve already read about, in other forms, but the story isn’t any different.
Overall, the book is not worth the time, but it’s so straightforward and simple, that it can be read within a few hours. Because of this, there is nothing to extract from the story, and it just turns out to be a waste of time. There is no depth, and frankly, there are many other books out there that can be read in place of this. Due to the vapidness of the book, it is no surprise that the movie itself was horrible. “The Host” isn’t a book you would want to read again, and a book worth reading again is a book worth reading once.
The Movie:
So of course, they had to go and make a movie out of it. If you thought “Twilight” was bad, this was even worse. The movie followed pretty much the same plot, but the filmmakers apparently wouldn’t have been able to sleep had they not changed around some parts that really could have just been left alone. The casting was actually pretty accurate, but the acting was ridiculous. Saoirse Ronan (Melanie/Wanda) did do a decent job maintaining the role, but the script was not well developed to make her stand out as the lead actress. At least she didn’t wear the same expression for the entirety of the movie. Max Irons is quite dashing, but his role of Jared Howe didn’t shine either. The dialogue was poor and the amount of action that should have taken place, didn’t. Instead, Jared’s character is shown to be much more shallow than he really was in the book. Jake Abel as Ian O’Shea was even worse. He didn’t show any sort of the emotion he was supposed to show as the character in the book; therefore, his character came off as boring and bland.
However, the scenery was beautiful. The entire story takes place in an Arizona desert, and the visual images were very pretty. The blue sky and brown desert contrast in the film was aesthetically pleasing. That was the only aspect of the film that anyone could enjoy. The beauty of the nature that the story takes place in made the movie just a little bit more bearable.
Yes, it is the age of science-fiction films. Almost every single movie coming out this year involves science fiction, such as the next “Star Trek” and Tom Cruise’s “Oblivion.” Perhaps, for this reason, The Host’s story was in season for a movie. However, this movie really is an insult to science fiction films. The directing seems inexperienced, and while the book itself was very long, there wasn’t much depth to make sure the movie is good. Therefore, I guess the directors can’t be blamed. Nonetheless, while it is usually extremely irritating when filmmakers strip down a book and don’t include everything in it for the movie, in this case it would have actually been a good idea to add extra details and make the book’s plot even better to create a killer science-fiction movie.
In truth, the story idea itself, if you completely remove the love story, is quite interesting. It could have easily been a good movie if the focal point of the movie wasn’t the love story, and if the filmmakers hadn’t tried to squeeze a 700 page book into a two hour movie.
In the end, it’s just a better idea not to make a movie out of a book. It has been proved many, many times, and obviously it hasn’t been working out. Aside from the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and the “Harry Potter” series, no book has ever been turned into a movie that portrays the plot in a better way. Especially in the case of a Stephenie Meyer book, it is completely common sense not to spend all that money on creating a film that most likely will not work.
Don’t waste your time on this film. While the actors and actresses are attractive, and the love story may seem “cute,” it’s really not worth anyone’s time. There’s a whole list of other films worth watching for the sake of attractive actors.
“The Host” is rated PG-13 and runs for 125 minutes.
