Ill-Conceived Invasion, The Host Disappoints.

The Good: Moments of character, Special effects, William Hurt!
The Bad: Inconsistent concept, Obvious character journey, Predictable plot, Most of the acting
The Basics: The Host lacks real consistency in its creature design and plot concept, making it a tough sell to serious science fiction fans.


When it comes to the teen supernatural romance genre, Stephanie Meyer (love or hate her works, most famously The Twilight Saga, reviewed here!) was the one who made the genre explode. So, it is unsurprising that film studios would leap all over her subsequent science fiction romance novel, The Host. Meyer sold at the right time, as the box office grosses for Beautiful Creatures (reviewed here!) and now the film adaptation of The Host seem to indicate. The market was flooded, though The Host (in its cinematic rendition, I openly admit I have not read the novel upon which this is based, so this is a very pure review of the film alone) is much more of a science fiction romance than anything supernatural. For the teen-oriented supernatural genre, the hopes at the box office now come down to The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones, being released later this year to see whether or not the trend still has a pulse or is dead.

As for The Host, having sat through the teen-oriented science fiction romance film, I find my problems with it not to be the predictable formula of Stephanie Meyer’s other teen-oriented romance works or the problem that I was easily able to notice much more overt fundamentalist moralizing in the film, but rather that the creature concept design is far too erratically executed. Like Warm Bodies (reviewed here!) earlier this year, one of the fundamental problems with The Host is that it fails to realistically address “what’s special in this case.” Just as in Warm Bodies, the viewer is asked to believe that after half a decade of the zombie apocalypse, no zombie has ever before eaten the brains and absorbed the memories of a loved one and then encountered that loved one, in The Host the stretch viewers are asked to make is that no human prior to a teenage girl who has a boyfriend has had the strength to resist her subjugating alien spirit and/or that none of the other alien spirits have had qualms about taking human hosts.

Moreover, in the opening monologue for The Host the aliens define their conquering nature as a symbiotic relationship wherein they take control of new bodies to experience life as that new type of life form. By that logic, the aliens should exist as a subconscious – observers within their host – as opposed to controllers. After all, the only thing these aliens should be able to do to understand the human condition based upon how they are greeted with resistance is fight each other for freedom. In other words, the stated purpose and execution have some fundamental concepts that make The Host an unbelievable mess.

Years after aliens arrive and assimilate most of the human population of Earth by infusing their non-corporeal selves to human bodies, the last pockets of human resistance are in hiding from the Seekers. Melanie Stryder is one of the humans who resisted for a long time, but has been recently assimilated by a Soul (as the aliens are known) called Wanderer (and who later goes by Wanda). Melanie is resisting Wanderer and when the aliens want to swap Wanderer with a more aggressive Soul to find where the Resistance is hiding, Wanderer uncharacteristically resists.

Melanie guides Wanderer into the desert in hopes that she might find her brother, Jamie, to whom she made a promise to return. At the human enclave, it quickly comes out that Melanie is occupied, but her uncle, Jeb, protects Melanie and the surviving humans begin to learn about the alien invaders. Wanda begins to forge a relationship with the human survivor (the age-appropriate Ian), which irks Melanie, who is still romantically tied to Jared. While the humans are besieged by the Seekers, Melanie/Wanda and Ian must bring a wounded Jamie to a Soul facility for advanced medical care, threatening the last known enclave of human resistance.

What is much more offensive than the bland Melanie loves Jared but Wanda loves Ian romantic plot in The Host is how the film advocates a number of strikingly socially conservative positions without even being terribly clever. So, for example, the moment that potential infidelity is about to occur, the chaste and moral Melanie is able to assert herself to slap Ian. In a population of mind-raped humans, none of their hosts have before been able to assert their control like that?! Really?! But as Melanie struggles to be emotionally loyal to Jared, Wanda and Ian bond in a very button-down and obviously monogamous way, making for a blandly uncomplicated concept.

But then there is the obvious Christian Fundamentalist hypocrisy that comes up as the movie progresses. Wanderer is an ancient Soul who has been to many worlds. As the humans fight for life (right to life, yes?), Wanderer, exhausted, wants to be able to leave Melanie’s body. She wants to exercise her right to die. The resolution to The Host takes a predictably banal and conservative view, which completely neglects the moral implications of what is done to Wanderer’s right to choose her own destiny.

On the acting front, it is William Hurt who does the most to help The Host. Amid characters that are virtually impossible to care about in a world that makes no rational sense, William Hurt’s Jeb is cool. William Hurt is Jeff Daniels cool and badass in The Host as the crusty, but rational Jeb. Hurt is the voice of patient reason, but he totes a gun like the best of them and makes for one of his more distinctive performance.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of his co-stars. Max Irons and Jake Abel play Jared and Ian, respectively, the white-bread love interests who are so bland they are virtually interchangeable. Diane Kruger’s performance as the Seeker is reduced to the archetype of the “blonde bitch” (what, Portia de Rossi was unavailable?!) who is cold and uninteresting as an adversary.

Much of the movie comes down to the carrying power of Saoirse Ronan as Melanie and Wanda. Unfortunately, Ronan does not land it. Much of her performance comes down to her opening her eyes wide so the CG team can put the alien glow to her eyes and voiceover work wherein she argues with herself to try to create the characters of Melanie and Wanda. Why Wanderer would have the same voice as her inside her own head is unclear and somewhat annoying, but regardless, Ronan’s portrayal of the young woman is uninspired and often stiff, making for a less-dynamic feeling character. Ronan has no on-screen chemistry with either of her male co-stars, making the romantic subplot feel very forced.

In the end, that makes The Host an unsatisfying science fiction film. In fact, I kept waiting for the film to finally reach the resolution from Star Trek’s pilot episode. In “The Cage” (reviewed here!), the aliens soon realize that humans are unsuitable for captivity and I kept wishing Stephanie Meyer and Andrew Niccol would get there.

For other alien invasion films, please check out my reviews of:
ID4: Independence Day
Robert A. Heinlein's The Puppet Masters
Skyline
War Of The Worlds
The X-Files: Fight The Future
Alien Trespass
Alien Vs. Predator

3.5/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Far Too Smart For The General Populace, In Time Is Deeply Satisfying Drama!

The Good: Theme, Plot, Acting, What elements of character there are
The Bad: Little weaker on character than I would like, Suspension of disbelief issues.
The Basics: In Time is the logical successor to V For Vendetta, adeptly disguising many of the same themes in a powerful, anti-capitalist film.


There are few movies I missed in theaters last year that I actually missed more than In Time. I had managed not to hear anything about it somehow, but my wife brought it to my attention. She said I would probably like it because the previews made it look smart. When I started seeing the advertisements, I agreed; it looked smart. It was only in theaters locally for about two weeks because it was too smart for most audiences. So, last night when my wife and I sat down to watch the film, I was prepared for a smart science fiction film that I had been anticipating for some time.

I was not disappointed. The best compliment I can give In Time is this; I have been ill lately and falling asleep before midnight most nights, usually while watching something I like and I am actually trying to stay awake through. I had no problem staying awake through In Time. In Time is like a smart version of Repo Men (reviewed here!) where the organ market is replaced by units of time. In Time is like V For Vendetta (reviewed here!) without the level of oppression that makes one want to kill themselves pretty much the entire time they are watching the movie.

Will Salas is a day to day worker living in a future where everyone is programmed to die within a year of turning twenty-five. Most people, like Will and his friend Borel, work each day to earn a little more time to keep themselves alive just a little longer. When Will’s mother dies on her fiftieth birthday after paying off the last of her debts, Will is shocked and hurt. That does not stop him from helping out a man who ends up in a bad neighborhood with a century on his arm clock. Protecting Henry Hamilton earns Will the man’s respect . . . and his century. Ready to die, Henry gives Will his time, watches one last sunrise and dies.

This sets off a fantastic chain of events for Will that puts him on a collision course with the Timekeeper Raymond Leon and the wealthy Sylvia Weis. Leon comes looking for the missing time that Henry had and he begins a relentless pursuit of Will. Will, for his part, gives Borel a decade, then flees the slums for a neighboring district. There, Will lives the good life, gambling his way up to more time than he ever thought he would need, while attracting the attention of Sylvia, the daughter of the main time banker (and bad gambler), Philippe. Raymond takes all but two hours of Will’s time, as it was “stolen property” and in a moment of desperation, Will flees with Sylvia to try to get more time. As Will flees with Sylvia, they bond and rise up against the system that has oppressed so many.

In Time is one of the most preachy movies of late that does not feel like it is simply preaching to the viewer. Instead, it is solidly entertaining, clever and well-developed. In fact, the only real critiques I have for it are that it is a little low on character and it requires far too much suspension of disbelief at key moments. On the character front, neither Will nor Sylvia ever seem passionate enough about anything. As a result, Will does not seem truly crushed by his mother’s death and when he learns Borel’s fate, it does not set him back emotionally in any recognizable way. Similarly, Sylvia has led a very sheltered life and once Will opens her to how the other half lives, she stops reacting with much real emotion. Shocked when her father does not offer up any time to save her life, she quickly leaps over traditional Stockholm Syndrome to simply take up Will’s cause with him. That seemed a little far-fetched for my tastes.

The only other aspect I could not buy were the moments that required suspension of disbelief. No, the premise of In Time is fine; I can completely invest myself in a world where traditional capitalism has been replaced with time for life. That’s fine. The problem comes in moments like the one where Will has twenty seconds left to live and has to run about two hundred meters uphill to a car to access an account (that is not his) in order to live. That sort of thing completely floored me as being utterly unrealistic. If he had even forty seconds, I could have bought it, but the sheer number of times characters are down to their last few seconds and manage to get a time infusion is just utterly unrealistic.

Even so, In Time is a must-see. The film is smart and it manages to be a soaring indictment of capitalism without ever making the relationship between money in the real world and time in the film’s world explicit. In Time does not insult the viewer’s intelligence, which is very refreshing. In a similar way, no one ever makes an allusion to Inspector Javert when Raymond Leon is hunting Will.

In addition to looking phenomenally good, In Time is incredibly well-acted. How Cillian Murphy did not garner more attention as Raymond Leon is absolutely beyond me. In In Time, Murphy is determined, analytical and efficient in a way that he plays completely different from his characters from Batman Begins, Red Eye or Inception. Instead, Murphy channels Tommy Lee Jones from The Fugitive in embodying an officer of the law who is all-business. Murphy’s set jaw and unblinking eyes help create a character the audience credibly believes could be the end of Will Salas.

Justin Timberlake does astonishingly well as Will Salas. Timberlake manages to never be over-the-top and in the moment when he pulls a gun on several thugs and gets out from under the local mob, he is truly, 100% badass. Timberlake makes Salas cool and part of the coolness comes from his articulation. Timberlake makes Will Salas a smart, strangely ethical rebel hero who captivates the viewer from start to finish. Amanda Seyfried, who looks pretty amazing with short red hair, holds her own, though her character is not given as much to do as I would have suspected from the advertising campaigns. That said, Seyfried plays a smarter character than her usual role and it is refreshing to see how adeptly she pulls it off.

The supporting cast of In Time is equally noteworthy. Johnny Galecki makes for a sympathetic sidekick in Borel and Olivia Wilde makes decent use out of her brief role as Will’s mother, Rachel. Because the film’s premise demands a young cast, good-looking Hollywood types like Alex Pettyfer and Jessica Parker Kennedy are pretty much the norm. The real shout out for the supporting cast has to go to Vincent Kartheiser. Kartheiser took a lot of crap when he appeared in the third and, especially, fourth seasons of Angel. Written off by many as just a young hunky guy brought in to raise the sagging ratings, Kartheiser was treated worse by fans than Michelle Tractenberg was. In In Time, Kartheiser plays Philippe and he is the embodiment of the powerful capitalist. His role of Philippe has much of the same gravitas as Michael Douglas’s Gordon Gekko. Seriously. He is that good.

On the basic DVD, In Time comes only with a handful of deleted and extended scenes. In Time is PG-13 and it makes good use of its one use of the f-word, though I imagine it would be easy for an unrated version to be released that included a more graphic representation of Will’s getaway from the time gang. That said, director Andrew Niccol does a decent job of creating a vivid and engrossing world and film. Like V For Vendetta, I find myself ultimately more disappointed in the audiences than the filmmaker. In Time did not lead to an uprising, so clearly its statement was lost on much of the audience.

For other movies that capture well a dystopian future, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Brazil
Daybreakers
Doomsday

8/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the films I have reviewed.

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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