The Host (2013)
Directed by Andrew Niccol
A parasitic alien soul is injected into the body of Melanie Stryder. Instead of carrying out her race's mission of taking over the Earth, "Wanda" (as she comes to be called) forms a bond with her host and sets out to aid other free humans.
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What critics say influenced The Host
It reminded me of All of Me, that movie where Steve Martin's body is possessed by Lily Tomlin.
From the moment we hear the inner voice from Melanie, the film derails from its attempt to be a combo rip-off of "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers" mixed with "All of Me," and heads down the path of unintentional laughs.
Ronan is one of our most promising young actresses, but listening to her wrestle for command of her own brain made me yearn for Steve Martin's antic duels with Lily Tomlin in "All of Me." Martin's bisexual split personality spilled out into the way he held himself, the way he walked, and ate, and urinated.
Director Andrew Niccol (who also adapted Meyer’s novel) dramatizes this by having Melanie speak telepathically to Wanderer, who in turn responds with spoken dialogue — which, for a while, gives “The Host” the strange tenor of a 1950s women’s psychodrama crossed with a 1980s body-switching comedy: “The Snake Pit” meets “All of Me.”
The story borrows from Jack Finney's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," which has been filmed several times -- by Don Siegel in 1956, Philip Kaufman in 1978 and Abel Ferrara in 1993, and more recently, but less successfully, by the Wachowskis as "The Invasion" in 2007.
It’s a little like the old Jeff Bridges movie “Starman’’ with the genders reversed, then serialized for Seventeen magazine.
However, if the deja vu don’t get you (it feels like elements of Falling Skies, Starman, The Island and This is Not My Life have been put in a blender and mulched into a schmaltzy, sappy pulp) then the portentous and pretentious dialogue, the worst use of voice-over since Jason Statham in Revolver and the repeated slapping of Ronan will.
Even by the standard of paranormal teen romances, The Host is ridiculous stuff, and derivative too: In addition to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, it draws liberally on Red Dawn, THX 1138 (the emotionless aliens love their white-on-white duds, though they do have an endearing weakness for very shiny sports cars) and Robert Silverberg's award-winning 1970 sci-fi story "Passengers"…minus the sex, of course, because this is Meyer-land.
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Despite being pursued by seeker types in chrome-plated Lotus sports cars (the Souls are apparently dazzled by anything shiny), our heroine makes it to her Uncle Jeb’s (William Hurt) last outpost of humanity — a kind of hippie commune inside a disused volcano that appears to contain sets left over from Norman Jewison’s film of Jesus Christ Superstar (1973).
The story borrows from Jack Finney's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," which has been filmed several times -- by Don Siegel in 1956, Philip Kaufman in 1978 and Abel Ferrara in 1993, and more recently, but less successfully, by the Wachowskis as "The Invasion" in 2007.
But Niccol exacerbates the larceny by freely borrowing elements of “The Terminator” and his own “Gattaca.”
This has a dulling effect that’s particularly noticeable in the best actors—Ronan, who’s stuck reciting the pedestrian narration as well as the almost comical conversations with herself (the sort one might recall from “Breaking the Waves”), and Hurt, who seems to be sleepwalking through the picture.
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Like Patrick Swayze learning to control his spectral form in Ghost, Melanie starts manipulating some body movements despite Wanderer, while serving as her shared form's conscience, saying such things as how the Seeker is, like, so totally "full of it."
Director Andrew Niccol (who also adapted Meyer’s novel) dramatizes this by having Melanie speak telepathically to Wanderer, who in turn responds with spoken dialogue — which, for a while, gives “The Host” the strange tenor of a 1950s women’s psychodrama crossed with a 1980s body-switching comedy: “The Snake Pit” meets “All of Me.”