On Mar. 29, “The Host,” based on the book by Stephenie Meyer, hit theaters. “The Host” is story of a future where a group of aliens has enslaved most of humanity. Despite controlling the minds of most of the human race, these aliens, called Souls, pride themselves on making Earth a more peaceful place and eliminating violence. A small number of human resistors, however, still remain.
“The Host” is centered on the story of Melanie Stryder (Saoirse Ronan), who is a part of this human resistance until she unexpectedly gets captured by the Souls. A Soul called Wanderer takes over Melanie’s body, but to her surprise Melanie is one of the few humans who can resist against the Souls and remain present. Though held prisoner in her own body, Melanie manages to convince Wanderer to seek some of the people in the human resistance, playing on the sympathy the Soul is starting to feel for the humans, cultivated by memories of Melanie’s boyfriend and younger brother.
I had previously read the book “The Host” and found the overall idea interesting, but the plot slow moving at times. The movie completely changed my opinion on this. Many of the more tedious parts from the book were cut out, and the film was much more fast paced. From the first scene of Melanie jumping through a glass window, to many action filled chase scenes throughout, “The Host” kept me on the edge of my seat.
Through cutting many of the less exciting scenes from the book, the movie did lose a few parts that I found vital to the plot. One of those was an understanding of Wanderer, who is afterall, a main character. While we learn plenty about Melanie, Wanderer is more often than not left a mystery. Also, various other characters, like rebels Ian O’Shea (Jake Abel), Jared Howe (Max Irons) and especially Kyle O’Shea ( Boyd Holbrook) had less personality and I was only given a base understanding of their characters. For example, Kyle was reduced to a stereotypical “bad guy” type character with no reference to his more pleasant traits that come to light later in the book.
“The Host” is definitely a movie worth seeing, especially if you are interested in science fiction or dystopian society stories, with lots of high tension action. However, if you want more fleshed out characters and details, I suggest you read the book.
Megan Yanders
Reporter
