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The Host (2013)Follow

#1 Jun 30 2013 at 9:36 AM Rating: Good
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For the uninitiated:

The movie is about a human girl who is infected with an alien parasite in a future where almost all of mankind has been infected with these alien parasites. The aliens survive through the human hosts and live in complete harmony with each other and the rest of the world, but at the cost of the human host's mind. Anyway, infected girl turns out to be special, because her mind didn't go away. She combats the alien parasite for control of the body, and through flashbacks of her friends, family and love interest, the alien grows sympathetic towards mankind and free will.

Now, that's a pretty brief summary, and it completely fails to present the massive fail that is this movie. It doesn't catch the subtle things, like the human girl's boyfriend making out with her at knifepoint the first time they meet, or the human girl's boyfriend making out with the alien-controlled body after he knows his girlfriend's mind is still captured inside. Come to think of it, the boyfriend is a bit of a creep. It also completely fails to show how damn boring the movie is. Even the summary above sounds semi-interesting - just like the official trailer.

Don't be fooled!

This is a chick flick disguised as a sci-fi action movie, just like Twilight was disguised as a vampire/werewolf movie. There's a good explanation for that: The movie is based on a story by Stephenie Meyer, the author of The Twilight Saga. It's 85% teenage love triangle, 5% action and 10% special effects. The special effects do not make up for the lack of action and the obscene amount of standing around, staring at love interests.

To understand the level of fail in this movie, you need to read this plot synopsis (warning - lots of text):

Quote:
The Host... a plot synopsis. (THIS WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS – but who really cares)

Okay... wow... well... where to begin. This movie was the equivalent of 6 bullets to the skull, but for some reason, I couldn't look away. This movie is also over 2 hours long for some reason, and a lot of pointless stupid stuff happens in it.. and I'm gunna cover everything I remember, cuz why not? There's these aliens.. they call themselves “souls” but they're really just a badly superimposed after effects glow effect attached to some squiggly lines. Well, these tiny glowy aliens travel the universe in chrome easter eggs and when they find a planet with life, they attach themselves to the brain stem and live in harmony with the organisms of said planet. The only physical change on the host is that they get to wear stupid *** Marilyn Manson contacts. So they came to Erf... Well on Erf, there's hoomans... and as we all know, us hoomans, we're special. There's always something different about us that makes us better and more special than all other species, cuz why the *beep* not? So these aliens, they attach themselves to most of the human population and for the most part make the planet like 10000000 times better. They've evolved past petty insignificant emotions and traits like greed and dishonesty, so the whole world is in a perfect state of harmony. Sounds good right? WRONG! The aliens realized that human wills are too strong to live in harmony with, so they block our emotions and thoughts out and take full control of our bodies, thus getting rid of our... well, humanity. There's a small group of renegade rebels (shocker!) who don't want any part of this and refuse to get taken over. This is a pretty interesting plot setup honestly... I was intrigued, until we met the rebels and I started meeting these other characters and their stupid *** plot outside the main plot...

So the main character is Melanie, played by Kristin Stewart v2. She foolishly got herself into a situation that put her, her boyfriend, and her little brother in risk of getting taken over, so she causes a diversion for them to get away, by jumping out of a window like 12 stories up. She lived... she lived... she lived.... I'll say it one more time.. She. Freaking. Lived. The concrete exploded around her and left a human shaped imprint in it and she lived. ***** physics and logic, it's a movie about aliens and human will conquering *beep* so let's just go with it. Lil bro and bf get away and the aliens take her. They spray her with febreze and it heals all her wounds and her exploded insides. While she's unconscious, they shove a soul alien in her. This alien has been around for thousands of years and has been to like all the planets with life on them that they know of. It calls itself the Wanderer, but is later shortened to Wanda... again, cuz why the *beep* not? Other aliens question Wanda on the whereabouts of the rebels, since Wanda has access to Melanie's memories. While about to answer a critical question that could give away the rebel camp, Melanie's will takes over and yells “stop” in the mind of Wanda... now this was no ordinary “stop.” Remember in old cartoons when they put a filter on cartoon characters voices when they thought to themselves in their head? They used the SAME filter for this crap. And they use it every single time Melanie talks... Blah blah blah... Wanda keeps giving the bad aliens info but nothing too helpful, cuz Melanie is fighting back. Later, Melanie floods the memories of her bf and family and *beep* in her mind causing Wanda to just sort of develop a semi “oh snap, I give a *beep* attitude. Also, Melanie is from Louisiana, and has a stupider accent than Sookie in True Blood.

Melanie eventually convinces Wanda to escape. Too much unneeded plot is introduced, so I'll just skip to them on the road in a car. Wanda thought they were going to Fort Worth, but Melanie used the little control she had to send them to the freaking desert somewhere where she knew the rebels were. Wanda figures it out and they fight Me, Myself and Irene style and crash the car. They're walking in the desert and pass out. Some time passes and they're found by Melanie's uncle, the leader of the rebels, who live in a volcano... They apparently give no *beep* about human life anymore and just kill any person with shiny eyes on sight, like zombies... But her uncle stops the dude running at Melanie with a machete, cuz he's torn about the situation. They take her to their volcano home until they can figure out what to do. Her little bro and bf are there. Her bf smacks the *beep* out of her upon seeing her. Like punches her dead in the nose. He yells some crap like “you took her!!! ldjaflkjdsf!” Melanie knows they won't believe that she's still in there so she keeps quiet... she also got punched in the face, so I'd be quiet to. Ummm... Im hazy about what happened around this part.. The uncle believes that Melanie is still in there, so he keeps her safe, while like everyone in the volcano wants to kill her for no reason... They are all southern, so it kinda makes sense. Like, they don't like the aliens.. This one didn't do anything to make them not like her, but she is an alien, so they hate her and want her dead... sounds familiar... The little bro talks to Wanda and asks her if Melanie is still in there, and the most cliché piece of tripe dialogue happens... I'll just type it:

Little bro – Melanie promised she'd come back for me... is she still in there?
Wanda - *looks thoughtfully and smiles* Has Melanie ever broken a promise to you?
Little bro - *confused*... *smiles big*

I threw up a little, but then the laughter hit...

So the uncle starts showing Wanda around the volcano... it's a nice volcano, equipped with electricity, a few fields of rice and corn or something, and running water... they don't explain how any of it works except that they use mirrors to give sunlight to the crops... it's stupid. Umm... some stuff happens... Wanda falls in love with some shovel faced guy. Melanie's old bf figures out that she's still there cuz he tried to rape her or something and she fought back, which is a dead giveaway that she's still in there. So now we have a good ol' fashion love triangle... Did I mention this movie was Twilight with an alien theme? Oh yeh.. it's Twilight with an alien theme. Some stuff happens... Wanda and shovel face keep falling more in love and kissing despite Melanie not wanting... more stuff happens that doesn't matter. Oh yeh! All this time, other alien people are looking for Melanie. Everything they drive is chrome. The main bad lady has a chrome lambo and tracks them to the desert. They fly around in chrome helichoppers looking for the rebels, but can't find them... This movie never really makes the alien race seem menacing or actually antagonistic... I kept forgetting there were even aliens in it and thought I was just watching a movie about a bipolar schitzo girl in a love triangle. Also, Melanie has no character really.. she just sort of makes cliché quips and retorts every now and then in that voice filter. You mainly get to know the Wanda character, who is just as interesting as you would assume an alien with no greed, dishonesty, ego, or personality would be... she basically just reads the lines and stands there... like that chick in Twilight.

One of the rebels tries to kill Wanda, but slips and falls toward the boiling lava water, but Wanda grabs his hand and calls for help. This act of goodness causes people to rethink their stance on Wanda, and now all of a sudden, all these bigot racist southerners love Wanda. They pull a complete 180 and go from wanting to kill her to baking her pies in their volcano oven. Umm... oh, little bro cuts his leg while bringing in the volcano harvest and it got infected or something and now he has gang green. Wanda comes up with the plan to go steal some febreze from the alien infested world. So she cuts her face and arm with a knife and tells the alien doctors that she tripped on a knife... I'm not kidding... They give her some febreze and heal her wounds. She then does the classic “look over there!” and while the doctor looked away, she stole some more febreze in her purse. They get back to the volcano and febreze lil bro's leg. It heals and he doesn't die! Yay!!

At some point, the main bad guy alien (this smoking hot blonde), that's looking for Wandelanie shoots some dude and realizes that she's losing control. She then becomes obsessed with getting Melanie... Wanda.. whatever... More pointless *beep* happens and bad alien woman gets captured. Wanda then tells the doctor of the volcano how to remove the alien souls from humans without killing the human or the alien, cuz a little earlier, she has a breakdown when she sees the doctor's failed attempts at removing them... Guess what the secret is... guess... YOU GOTTA HAVE KINDNESS IN YOUR HEART WHEN TRYING TO REMOVE THE ALIENS AND THEY WILL COME OUT ON THEIR OWN. This gave me cancer and diabetes at the same time... I got caneretes from this part of the movie... They take the alien out of the blonde woman and put it back in it's chrome easter egg and the woman is all happy and stuff cuz she's got her mind back. They then bring the bad alien easter egg to the alien transport area, which I assume is a pretty freaking important place, cuz that's where all the aliens land when they come to earth... Well this place is completely unguarded. No one is there... They just drive up. They teleport the bad alien to another planet or something and whew, the never threatening evil is gone. Oh also, Wanda wants to get out of Melanie's body and die. She realizes that she's lived a really long life but always in a host and hates the fact that she has taken lives from so many. No one knows that she wants to die, but she tells everyone that she wants out of Melanie's body... EVERYONE objects. The whole cast has grown to like Wanda more than they ever liked Melanie. No one gives a single *beep* about Melanie.. they just want Wanda to stay... Melanie knows that Wanda really wants to die and she objects cuz they have apparently formed a sisterly bond, by making out with two different dudes that each other despises, but eh, whatever. So after convincing, Wanda gets the doctor to take her out of Melanie's body. Fade to black... then fade back in in first person to see Melanie, her bf, lil bro, uncle, doctor, and shovel face, but who's eyes are we looking through?!?!?!?! Spoiler!! They put Wanda into another body of a vegetable girl.

Here's the plot device: This same doctor that couldn't fix lil bro's cut knee earlier, kept a woman alive for a month that had a severed brain stem... so they put Wanda in her and sprayed her with febreze and she was better. They also used the following flawed logic to make sense of it: Doctor cut this hoe's brain stem trying to take an alien out, the hoe didn't die, so now they put Wanda in her and healed her with febreze spray. So it's okay for Wanda to live, since she isn't taking anyone's life... but that logic is flawed, because they could have just healed the woman with the febreze spray and she could have had her old mind and life back.... whatever, it's just a reason to keep the Wanda character and make sure shovel face still has a love interest. Whoever wrote this was clearly terrible, so let's just go with it. Oh, the chick from Sucker Punch and Lemony Snicket's is the new Wanda.

You'd think it's over after this nice happy ending... WRONG! What kind of amazing terrible piece of *beep* movie would this be without the setup for a SEQUALLLLLLL!

So the whole crew is driving around town and get pulled over by aliens. The aliens shine flashlights at them and discover they are all human except for Wanda, to which she says that she's a friend. The aliens smile and a black dude human walks out and says something along the lines like “Good, we found another group.” And Wanda looks at one of the alien guys and says some lame crap like “I guess I wasn't the only one that switched sides.”

BAM! Hardcut to black and end credits... I'm going jump off a bridge now.


Plot synopsis above was taken from IMDb.com
-source-

Edited, Jun 30th 2013 5:38pm by Mazra
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#2 Jun 30 2013 at 10:24 AM Rating: Excellent
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The Koreans did it better, eh?
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#3 Jun 30 2013 at 2:50 PM Rating: Good
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I liked the Korean one better. This one had potential, but the sappy love story plot got in the way.
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#4 Jun 30 2013 at 6:16 PM Rating: Good
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As soon as I seen it was by the same author of The Twilight Saga, I knew to stay away from it.
#5 Jul 01 2013 at 8:00 AM Rating: Good
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There was, without a doubt, no way this movie was going to be worth even accidentally seeing on TV.
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#6 Jul 01 2013 at 7:48 PM Rating: Excellent
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Yeah, I have superhuman immersion skills, which is why I managed to sit through a Twilight marathon once, but this movie was too much. I had to alt-tab out to Wikipedia just to see how far along in the story I was. Completely spaced out during some of the sappy love story scenes, and when the credits rolled, I did not feel any emotional response at all. My heart is usually racing when a movie ends, but this one didn't even have a real climax. Bad guy shows up, crazy/genius uncle shoots her in the shoulder, they Febreze her shoulder and extract the parasite using loveâ„¢, and that's that...

If I had to condense my feelings about this movie to one word, it would be "meh". It felt like eating frozen water. You know you're eating ice, which would normally be awesome, but somehow it just doesn't leave a good taste in your mouth. It doesn't leave any taste at all, actually.

First time since I watched The King Maker that I actually wanted back those two hours of my life. Such a bland and completely pointless movie. I'm sure there's supposed to be some deeper message, like friendship, finding humanity, finding love in the strangest places, etc., but all I got out of it was a burning need to create a thread about how much I disliked it. I felt violated. I felt like screaming "THAT'S NOT HOW REAL LIFE WORKS!" every other scene when one of the characters did something so ditsy that you'd think the scriptwriter/author was 12 years old and Amish.
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#7 Jul 01 2013 at 10:16 PM Rating: Excellent
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Stephenie Meyer has much to answer for. I still intend to get her, Kevin J "I can't write my way out of a paper bag" Anderson and James Patterson in a room together and lock the doors and release an army of robot wolves to tear them to tiny little pieces before they can write again (using real ones would be animal cruelty). No jury in the world would convict, and I'd probably get a medal.
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#8 Jul 09 2013 at 5:13 AM Rating: Excellent
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RavennofTitan wrote:
As soon as I seen it was by the same author of The Twilight Saga, I knew to stay away from it.

Ahahahahahahaha. My partner, being an aficionado of 50's-70's Sci-Fi, watched it. He had liked a plot summary, but found the movie extraordinary long, and edited badly. It was so tedious he took a break [half an hour from the ending], and was surprised to discover that the film was only 2 and a bit hours long. Given the pacing, he suspected it had been adapted from a novel and googled the name of the author. Given that two of the major plot points turned on a "kissing scene" he suspected I might have read it, or might like to watch/read it. So he told me about the premise, and asked me had I read any Stephanie Meyer? The name gave me a twinge of recognition, but I couldn't place it.

His plot precis made me think he was talking about a black and white 50's or 60's sci-fi movie, until I realised he wasn't. NOW I know where I know the name Stephanie Meyer from. Oh my poor partner! I think it will be a kindness if I don't tell him he just watched a "Twilight" associated film.
#9 Jul 09 2013 at 9:22 AM Rating: Good
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D'awwwwwww. Ok, I watched it. Two good points about the movie. A few of the shots were exceptionally composed. Most of those were when Wanda got all depressed, but they pulled out their best desert mesa/buttes shots for that. Also the shot of Wanda on the far right of the screen in angelic emo pose. More importantly, the message of the story is a really good one for teens and young adults. Finding out that not all of your enemies are "bad guys". Realising that there is a peaceful resolution possible in an almost intractable conflict. If you don't think too hard about what the released Souls do when they get to their destination. It's not really a long-term solution. A game of Shuttle-Souls, anyone? Would there ever be a morally perfect and feasible host species for the Souls?

Personally I found the guy that was able to fall in love with an alien, and to go fetch his rival-in-love to kiss her body much more interesting than the other guy. The disney ending where Major Spoiler a brain dead coma patient is available was way too neat, but I guess suitable for a teen/YA audience. I would have found it more interesting if they had put Wanda into Ian's body.
#10 Jul 09 2013 at 10:07 PM Rating: Good
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Airpyanfar wrote:
More importantly, the message of the story is a really good one for teens and young adults. Finding out that not all of your enemies are "bad guys". Realising that there is a peaceful resolution possible in an almost intractable conflict.


That's my main gripe: The movie does not devote nearly enough time to what could have been an interesting plot - the human/alien relationship. Wanda forcibly takes over Whatsherface's body and for the first 30 minutes they sort of fight each other. Then Whatsherface gets all depressed and stuff, probably from being forced to make out with a guy who wanted to kill her, and then suddenly she doesn't want to come back, because Wanda would die.

They had two hours to fold that into a nice little package, but instead we're handed this mess of a love story. I almost choked on my tongue when every single human in the refugee camp bluntly stated that they did not want Wanda to leave the body. One moment they want to decapitate her, because aliens are evil and such for fixing the world, and the next they want the alien parasite to stay. Hell, even Whatsherface doesn't want her own body back.

I'm sure there are many fancy words to describe this movie, but no matter how much I look around in the thesaurus, I keep coming back to one word: Stupid. It's a stupid movie. It had potential, but the director and the scriptwriter completely blew it. Or maybe the author did - I haven't actually read the book. It just reeks of the director wanting to do another Twilight Saga and failing miserably at it.

Edited, Jul 10th 2013 6:08am by Mazra
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#11 Jul 10 2013 at 12:58 AM Rating: Excellent
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Mazra wrote:
It just reeks of the director wanting to do another Twilight Saga and failing miserably at it.


You make it sound like the Twilight movies were in any way acceptable. Smiley: wink
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