Movie Review: The Host

I knew that The Host was based on a book by Stephenie Meyer, the same author who wrote the Twilight series. So when I decided to rent The Host from RedBox I just assumed that there would be a RiffTrax [1] available to help me make it through the movie unscathed. To my surprise RiffTrax hasn't done anything with The Host, yet. But by then it was too late—I'd already come home with the DVD. So we watched it commentary-free.

My verdict: It turns out that The Host wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be. It certainly wasn't a great movie, but it wasn't deplorable, either. There was some pretty impressive footage of the American Southwest. Sometimes the voice-overs were cheesy-sounding [2], but the rest of the acting was functional, if not remarkable. The attitudes of several characters concerning Wanda changed too quickly to be believable (but that's the writers' fault, not the actors'). And it was hard to take any of the alien characters seriously because of their eyes. A couple of the actors looked similar enough to be hard to tell apart. A lot of the 'science' of the show was ridiculous (e.g. growing wheat in a cave by using mirrors to acquire sunlight).

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Notes:

[1] See my RiffTrax reviews of the five Twilight movies here, here, here, and here.

[2] How come no one ever noticed that she was having a one-sided conversation?

Image attributions:

Close-up of an Eye is by SarahCartwright, available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahcartwright/369063792/.